The Danish History, Books I-IX, by Grammaticus Saxo

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Title: The Danish History, Books I-IX

Author: Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

Release Date: February 11, 2006 [EBook #1150]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DANISH HISTORY, BOOKS I-IX ***




Produced by Douglas B. Killings and David Widger





THE DANISH HISTORY,

BOOKS I-IX

by

Saxo Grammaticus

("Saxo the Learned") fl. Late 12th - Early 13th Century A.D.


     PREPARER'S NOTE:

     Originally written in Latin in the early years of the 13th
     Century A.D. by the Danish historian Saxo, of whom little is
     known except his name.

     The text of this edition is based on that published as
     "The Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus",
     translated by Oliver Elton (Norroena Society, New York, 1905).
     This edition is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN in the United States.

     This electronic edition was edited, proofed, and prepared by
     Douglas B. Killings.

     The preparer would like to thank Mr. James W. Marchand and Mr.
     Jessie D. Hurlbut for their invaluable assistance in the
     production of this electronic text.  Thank you.  I am indebted to
     you both.

     Although Saxo wrote 16 books of his "Danish History", only the
     first nine were ever translated by Mr. Oliver Elton; it is these
     nine books that are here included.  As far as the preparer knows,
     there is (unfortunately) no public domain English translation of
     Books X-XVI.  Those interested in the latter books should search
     for the translation mentioned below.




SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

ORIGINAL TEXT--

Olrik, J and Raeder (Ed.): "Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum"
(Copenhagen, 1931).

Dansk Nationallitteraert Arkiv: "Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum" (DNA,
Copenhagen, 1996). Web-based Latin edition of Saxo, substantiallly based
on the above edition; currently at the


OTHER TRANSLATIONS--

Fisher, Peter (Trans.) and Hilda Ellis Davidson (Ed.): "Saxo
Grammaticus: History of the Danes" (Brewer, Cambridge, 1979).


RECOMMENDED READING--

Jones, Gwyn: "History of the Vikings" (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1968, 1973, 1984).

Sturlson, Snorri: "The Heimskringla" (Translation: Samual Laing, London,
1844; released as Online Medieval and Classical Library E-text
#15, 1996). Web version at the following URL:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Heimskringla/




INTRODUCTION.




SAXO'S POSITION.

Saxo Grammaticus, or "The Lettered", one of the notable historians of
the Middle Ages, may fairly be called not only the earliest chronicler
of Denmark, but her earliest writer. In the latter half of the twelfth
century, when Iceland was in the flush of literary production, Denmark
lingered behind. No literature in her vernacular, save a few Runic
inscriptions, has survived. Monkish annals, devotional works, and lives
were written in Latin; but the chronicle of Roskild, the necrology of
Lund, the register of gifts to the cloister of Sora, are not literature.
Neither are the half-mythological genealogies of kings; and besides, the
mass of these, though doubtless based on older verses that are lost,
are not proved to be, as they stand, prior to Saxo. One man only, Saxo's
elder contemporary, Sueno Aggonis, or Sweyn (Svend) Aageson, who wrote
about 1185, shares or anticipates the credit of attempting a connected
record. His brief draft of annals is written in rough mediocre Latin.
It names but a few of the kings recorded by Saxo, and tells little that
Saxo does not. Yet there is a certain link between the two writers.
Sweyn speaks of Saxo with respect; he not obscurely leaves him the task
of filling up his omissions. Both writers, servants of the brilliant
Bishop Absalon, and probably set by him upon their task, proceed, like
Geoffrey of Monmouth, by gathering and editing mythical matter. This
they more or less embroider, and arrive in due course insensibly at
actual history. Both, again, thread their stories upon a genealogy of
kings in part legendary. Both write at the spur of patriotism, both to
let Denmark linger in the race for light and learning, and desirous to
save her glories, as other nations have saved theirs, by a record. But
while Sweyn only made a skeleton chronicle, Saxo leaves a memorial in
which historian and philologist find their account. His seven later
books are the chief Danish authority for the times which they relate;
his first nine, here translated, are a treasure of myth and folk-lore.
Of the songs and stories which Denmark possessed from the common
Scandinavian stock, often her only native record is in Saxo's Latin.
Thus, as a chronicler both of truth and fiction, he had in his own
land no predecessor, nor had he any literary tradition behind him.
Single-handed, therefore, he may be said to have lifted the dead-weight
against him, and given Denmark a writer. The nature of his work will be
discussed presently.




LIFE OF SAXO.

Of Saxo little is known but what he himself indicates, though much
doubtful supposition has gathered round his name.

That he was born a Dane his whole language implies; it is full of a glow
of aggressive patriotism. He also often praises the Zealanders at the
expense of other Danes, and Zealand as the centre of Denmark; but that
is the whole contemporary evidence for the statement that he was a
Zealander. This statement is freely taken for granted three centuries
afterwards by Urne in the first edition of the book (1514), but is not
traced further back than an epitomator, who wrote more than 200 years
after Saxo's death. Saxo tells us that his father and grandfather fought
for Waldemar the First of Denmark, who reigned from 1157 to 1182. Of
these men we know nothing further, unless the Saxo whom he names as one
of Waldemar's admirals be his grandfather, in which case his family was
one of some distinction and his father and grandfather probably "King's
men". But Saxo was a very common name, and we shall see the licence of
hypothesis to which this fact has given rise. The notice, however,
helps us approximately towards Saxo's birth-year. His grandfather, if
he fought for Waldemar, who began to reign in 1157, can hardly have been
born before 1100, nor can Saxo himself have been born before 1145 or
1150. But he was undoubtedly born before 1158, since he speaks of the
death of Bishop Asker, which took place in that year, as occurring "in
our time". His life therefore covers and overlaps the last half of the
twelfth century.

His calling and station in life are debated. Except by the anonymous
Zealand chronicler, who calls him Saxo "the Long", thus giving us the
one personal detail we have, he has been universally known as Saxo
"Grammaticus" ever since the epitomator of 1431 headed his compilation
with the words, "A certain notable man of letters ("grammaticus"), a
Zealander by birth, named Saxo, wrote," etc. It is almost certain that
this general term, given only to men of signal gifts and learning,
became thus for the first time, and for good, attached to Saxo's name.
Such a title, in the Middle Ages, usually implied that its owner was
a churchman, and Saxo's whole tone is devout, though not conspicuously
professional.

But a number of Saxos present themselves in the same surroundings with
whom he has been from time to time identified. All he tells us himself
is, that Absalon, Archbishop of Lund from 1179 to 1201, pressed him, who
was "the least of his companions, since all the rest refused the task",
to write the history of Denmark, so that it might record its glories
like other nations. Absalon was previously, and also after his
promotion, Bishop of Roskild, and this is the first circumstance giving
colour to the theory--which lacks real evidence--that Saxo the historian
was the same as a certain Saxo, Provost of the Chapter of Roskild,
whose death is chronicled in a contemporary hand without any mark of
distinction. It is unlikely that so eminent a man would be thus barely
named; and the appended eulogy and verses identifying the Provost and
the historian are of later date. Moreover, the Provost Saxo went on
a mission to Paris in 1165, and was thus much too old for the theory.
Nevertheless, the good Bishop of Roskild, Lave Urne, took this identity
for granted in the first edition, and fostered the assumption. Saxo was
a cleric; and could such a man be of less than canonical rank? He was
(it was assumed) a Zealander; he was known to be a friend of Absalon,
Bishop of Roskild. What more natural than that he should have been the
Provost Saxo? Accordingly this latter worthy had an inscription in gold
letters, written by Lave Urne himself, affixed to the wall opposite his
tomb.

Even less evidence exists for identifying our Saxo with the scribe of
that name--a comparative menial--who is named in the will of Bishop
Absalon; and hardly more warranted is the theory that he was a member,
perhaps a subdeacon, of the monastery of St. Laurence, whose secular
canons formed part of the Chapter of Lund. It is true that Sweyn
Aageson, Saxo's senior by about twenty years, speaks (writing about
1185) of Saxo as his "contubernalis". Sweyn Aageson is known to have had
strong family connections with the monastery of St. Laurence; but there
is only a tolerably strong probability that he, and therefore that Saxo,
was actually a member of it. ("Contubernalis" may only imply comradeship
in military service.) Equally doubtful is the consequence that
since Saxo calls himself "one of the least" of Absalon's "followers"
("comitum"), he was probably, if not the inferior officer, who is called
an "acolitus", at most a sub-deacon, who also did the work of a superior
"acolitus". This is too poor a place for the chief writer of Denmark,
high in Absalon's favor, nor is there any direct testimony that Saxo
held it.

His education is unknown, but must have been careful. Of his training
and culture we only know what his book betrays. Possibly, like other
learned Danes, then and afterwards, he acquired his training and
knowledge at some foreign University. Perhaps, like his contemporary
Anders Suneson, he went to Paris; but we cannot tell. It is not even
certain that he had a degree; for there is really little to identify him
with the "M(agister) Saxo" who witnessed the deed of Absalon founding
the monastery at Sora.




THE HISTORY.

How he was induced to write his book has been mentioned. The expressions
of modesty Saxo uses, saying that he was "the least" of Absalon's
"followers", and that "all the rest refused the task", are not to be
taken to the letter. A man of his parts would hardly be either the least
in rank, or the last to be solicited. The words, however, enable us to
guess an upward limit for the date of the inception of the work. Absalon
became Archbishop in 1179, and the language of the Preface (written,
as we shall see, last) implies that he was already Archbishop when he
suggested the History to Saxo. But about 1185 we find Sweyn Aageson
complimenting Saxo, and saying that Saxo "had `determined' to set forth
all the deeds" of Sweyn Estridson, in his eleventh book, "at greater
length in a more elegant style". The exact bearing of this notice on
the date of Saxo's History is doubtful. It certainly need not imply that
Saxo had already written ten books, or indeed that he had written
any, of his History. All we call say is, that by 1185 a portion of the
history was planned. The order in which its several parts were composed,
and the date of its completion, are not certainly known, as Absalon died
in 1201. But the work was not then finished; for, at the end of Bk. XI,
one Birger, who died in 1202, is mentioned as still alive.

We have, however, a yet later notice. In the Preface, which, as its
whole language implies, was written last, Saxo speaks of Waldemar II
having "encompassed (`complexus') the ebbing and flowing waves of Elbe."
This language, though a little vague, can hardly refer to anything but
an expedition of Waldemar to Bremen in 1208. The whole History was in
that case probably finished by about 1208. As to the order in which its
parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction
was to write a history of Absalon's own doings. The fourteenth and
succeeding books deal with these at disproportionate length, and
Absalon, at the expense even of Waldemar, is the protagonist. Now Saxo
states in his Preface that he "has taken care to follow the statements
("asserta") of Absalon, and with obedient mind and pen to include both
his own doings and other men's doings of which he learnt."

The latter books are, therefore, to a great extent, Absalon's personally
communicated memoirs. But we have seen that Absalon died in 1201,
and that Bk. xi, at any rate, was not written after 1202. It almost
certainly follows that the latter books were written in Absalon's
life; but the Preface, written after them, refers to events in 1208.
Therefore, unless we suppose that the issue was for some reason
delayed, or that Saxo spent seven years in polishing--which is not
impossible--there is some reason to surmise that he began with that
portion of his work which was nearest to his own time, and added
the previous (especially the first nine, or mythical) books, as a
completion, and possibly as an afterthought. But this is a point which
there is no real means of settling. We do not know how late the Preface
was written, except that it must have been some time between 1208 and
1223, when Anders Suneson ceased to be Archbishop; nor do we know when
Saxo died.




HISTORY OF THE WORK.

Nothing is stranger than that a work of such force and genius, unique in
Danish letters, should have been forgotten for three hundred years, and
have survived only in an epitome and in exceedingly few manuscripts. The
history of the book is worth recording. Doubtless its very merits, its
"marvellous vocabulary, thickly-studded maxims, and excellent variety of
images," which Erasmus admired long afterwards, sealed it to the vulgar.
A man needed some Latin to appreciate it, and Erasmus' natural wonder
"how a Dane at that day could have such a force of eloquence" is a
measure of the rarity both of the gift and of a public that could
appraise it. The epitome (made about 1430) shows that Saxo was felt to
be difficult, its author saying: "Since Saxo's work is in many places
diffuse, and many things are said more for ornament than for historical
truth, and moreover his style is too obscure on account of the number
of terms ("plurima vocabula") and sundry poems, which are unfamiliar to
modern times, this opuscle puts in clear words the more notable of
the deeds there related, with the addition of some that happened after
Saxo's death." A Low-German version of this epitome, which appeared in
1485, had a considerable vogue, and the two together "helped to drive
the history out of our libraries, and explains why the annalists and
geographers of the Middle Ages so seldom quoted it." This neglect
appears to have been greatest of all in Denmark, and to have lasted
until the appearance of the "First Edition" in 1511.

The first impulse towards this work by which Saxo was saved, is found
in a letter from the Bishop of Roskild, Lave Urne, dated May 1512, to
Christian Pederson, Canon of Lund, whom he compliments as a lover of
letters, antiquary, and patriot, and urges to edit and publish "tam
divinum latinae eruditionis culmen et splendorem Saxonem nostrum".
Nearly two years afterwards Christian Pederson sent Lave Urne a copy of
the first edition, now all printed, with an account of its history. "I
do not think that any mortal was more inclined and ready for" the task.
"When living at Paris, and paying heed to good literature, I twice sent
a messenger at my own charges to buy a faithful copy at any cost, and
bring it back to me. Effecting nothing thus, I went back to my country
for this purpose; I visited and turned over all the libraries, but still
could not pull out a Saxo, even covered with beetles, bookworms, mould,
and dust. So stubbornly had all the owners locked it away." A worthy
prior, in compassion offered to get a copy and transcribe it with his
own hand, but Christian, in respect for the prior's rank, absurdly
declined. At last Birger, the Archbishop of Lund, by some strategy, got
a copy, which King Christian the Second allowed to be taken to Paris on
condition of its being wrought at "by an instructed and skilled graver
(printer)." Such a person was found in Jodocus Badius Ascenshls, who
adds a third letter written by himself to Bishop Urne, vindicating his
application to Saxo of the title Grammaticus, which he well defines
as "one who knows how to speak or write with diligence, acuteness, or
knowledge." The beautiful book he produced was worthy of the zeal, and
unsparing, unweariable pains, which had been spent on it by the band
of enthusiasts, and it was truly a little triumph of humanism. Further
editions were reprinted during the sixteenth century at Basic and at
Frankfort-on-Main, but they did not improve in any way upon the first;
and the next epoch in the study of Saxo was made by the edition and
notes of Stephanus Johansen Stephanius, published at Copenhagen in
the middle of the seventeenth century (1644). Stephanius, the first
commentator on Saxo, still remains the best upon his language. Immense
knowledge of Latin, both good and bad (especially of the authors Saxo
imitated), infinite and prolix industry, a sharp eye for the text, and
continence in emendation, are not his only virtues. His very bulkiness
and leisureliness are charming; he writes like a man who had eternity to
write in, and who knew enough to fill it, and who expected readers of an
equal leisure. He also prints some valuable notes signed with the famous
name of Bishop Bryniolf of Skalholt, a man of force and talent, and
others by Casper Barth, "corculum Musarum", as Stephanius calls him,
whose textual and other comments are sometimes of use, and who worked
with a MS. of Saxo. The edition of Klotz, 1771, based on that of
Stephanius, I have but seen; however, the first standard commentary is
that begun by P. E. Muller, Bishop of Zealand, and finished after his
death by Johan Velschow, Professor of History at Copenhagen, where the
first part of the work, containing text and notes, was published in
1839; the second, with prolegomena and fuller notes, appearing in 1858.
The standard edition, containing bibliography, critical apparatus based
on all the editions and MS. fragments, text, and index, is the admirable
one of that indefatigable veteran, Alfred Holder, Strasburg, 1886.

Hitherto the translations of Saxo have been into Danish. The first that
survives, by Anders Soffrinson Vedel, dates from 1575, some sixty years
after the first edition. In such passages as I have examined it is
vigorous, but very free, and more like a paraphrase than a translation,
Saxo's verses being put into loose prose. Yet it has had a long life,
having been modified by Vedel's grandson, John Laverentzen, in 1715,
and reissued in 1851. The present version has been much helped by the
translation of Seier Schousbolle, published at Copenhagen in 1752. It is
true that the verses, often the hardest part, are put into periphrastic
verse (by Laurentius Thura, c. 1721), and Schousbolle often does not
face a difficulty; but he gives the sense of Saxo simply and concisely.
The lusty paraphrase by the enthusiastic Nik. Fred. Sev. Grundtvig, of
which there have been several editions, has also been of occasional use.
No other translations, save of a scrap here and there into German, seem
to be extant.




THE MSS.

It will be understood, from what has been said, that no complete MS. of
Saxo's History is known. The epitomator in the fourteenth century, and
Krantz in the seventeenth, had MSS. before them; and there was that one
which Christian Pedersen found and made the basis of the first edition,
but which has disappeared. Barth had two manuscripts, which are said to
have been burnt in 1636. Another, possessed by a Swedish parish
priest, Aschaneus, in 1630, which Stephenhis unluckily did not know of,
disappeared in the Royal Archives of Stockholm after his death. These
are practically the only MSS. of which we have sure information,
excepting the four fragments that are now preserved. Of these by far the
most interesting is the "Angers Fragment."

This was first noticed in 1863, in the Angers Library, where it was
found degraded into the binding of a number of devotional works and a
treatise on metric, dated 1459, and once the property of a priest at
Alencon. In 1877 M. Gaston Paris called the attention of the learned to
it, and the result was that the Danish Government received it next year
in exchange for a valuable French manuscript which was in the Royal
Library at Copenhagen. This little national treasure, the only piece of
contemporary writing of the History, has been carefully photographed and
edited by that enthusiastic and urbane scholar, Christian Bruun. In the
opinion both of Dr. Vigfusson and M. Paris, the writing dates from about
1200; and this date, though difficult to determine, owing to the paucity
of Danish MSS. of the 12th and early lath centuries, is confirmed by the
character of the contents. For there is little doubt that the Fragment
shows us Saxo in the labour of composition. The MSS. looks as if
expressly written for interlineation. Besides a marginal gloss by a
later, fourteenth century hand, there are two distinct sets of variants,
in different writings, interlined and running over into the margin.
These variants are much more numerous in the prose than in the verse.
The first set are in the same hand as the text, the second in another
hand: but both of them have the character, not of variants from some
other MSS., but of alternative expressions put down tentatively. If
either hand is Saxo's it is probably the second. He may conceivably
have dictated both at different times to different scribes. No other man
would tinker the style in this fashion. A complete translation of all
these changes has been deemed unnecessary in these volumes; there is
a full collation in Holder's "Apparatus Criticus". The verdict of the
Angers-Fragment, which, for the very reason mentioned, must not be taken
as the final form of the text, nor therefore, despite its antiquity,
as conclusive against the First Edition where the two differ, is to
confirm, so far as it goes, the editing of Ascensius and Pederson. There
are no vital differences, and the care of the first editors, as well as
the authority of their source, is thus far amply vindicated.

A sufficient account of the other fragments will be found in Holder's
list. In 1855 M. Kall-Rasmussen found in the private archives at
Kronborg a scrap of fourteenth century MS., containing a short passage
from Bk. vii. Five years later G. F. Lassen found, at Copenhagen, a
fragment of Bk. vi believed to be written in North Zealand, and in
the opinion of Bruun belonging to the same codex as Kall-Rasmussen's
fragment. Of another longish piece, found in Copenhagen at the end of
the seventeenth century by Johannes Laverentzen, and belonging to a
codex burnt in the fire of 1728, a copy still extant in the Copenhagen
Museum, was made by Otto Sperling. For fragments, either extant or
alluded to, of the later books, the student should consult the carefully
collated text of Holder. The whole MS. material, therefore, covers but
a little of Saxo's work, which was practically saved for Europe by the
perseverance and fervour for culture of a single man, Bishop Urne.




SAXO AS A WRITER.

Saxo's countrymen have praised without stint his remarkable style, for
he has a style. It is often very bad; but he writes, he is not in
vain called Grammaticus, the man of letters. His style is not merely
remarkable considering its author's difficulties; it is capable at need
of pungency and of high expressiveness. His Latin is not that of the
Golden Age, but neither is it the common Latin of the Middle Ages. There
are traces of his having read Virgil and Cicero. But two writers in
particular left their mark on him. The first and most influential is
Valerius Maximus, the mannered author of the "Memorabilia", who lived in
the first half of the first century, and was much relished in the Middle
Ages. From him Saxo borrowed a multitude of phrases, sometimes apt but
often crabbed and deformed, as well as an exemplary and homiletic turn
of narrative. Other idioms, and perhaps the practice of interspersing
verses amid prose (though this also was a twelfth century Icelandic
practice), Saxo found in a fifth-century writer, Martianus Capella, the
pedantic author of the "De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii" Such models
may have saved him from a base mediaeval vocabulary; but they were not
worthy of him, and they must answer for some of his falsities of style.
These are apparent. His accumulation of empty and motley phrase, like a
garish bunch of coloured bladders; his joy in platitude and pomposity,
his proneness to say a little thing in great words, are only too easy
to translate. We shall be well content if our version also gives some
inkling of his qualities; not only of what Erasmus called his "wonderful
vocabulary, his many pithy sayings, and the excellent variety of his
images"; but also of his feeling for grouping, his barbaric sense of
colour, and his stateliness. For he moves with resource and strength
both in prose and verse, and is often only hindered by his own wealth.
With no kind of critical tradition to chasten him, his force is often
misguided and his work shapeless; but he stumbles into many splendours.




FOLK LORE INDEX.

The mass of archaic incidents, beliefs, and practices recorded by the
12th-century writer seemed to need some other classification than a bare
alphabetic index. The present plan, a subject-index practically,
has been adopted with a view to the needs of the anthropologist and
folk-lorist. Its details have been largely determined by the bulk and
character of the entries themselves. No attempt has been made to
supply full parallels from any save the more striking and obvious old
Scandinavian sources, the end being to classify material rather than to
point out its significance of geographic distribution. With regard to
the first three heads, the reader who wishes to see how Saxo compares
with the Old Northern poems may be referred to the Grimm Centenary
papers, Oxford, 1886, and the Corpus Poeticurn Boreale, Oxford, 1883.




POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.

King--As portrayed by Saxo, the ideal king should be (as in "Beowulf's
Lay") generous, brave and just. He should be a man of accomplishments,
of unblemished body, presumably of royal kin (peasant-birth is
considered a bar to the kingship), usually a son or a nephew, or brother
of his foregoer (though no strict rule of succession seems to appear in
Saxo), and duly chosen and acknowledged at the proper place of election.
In Denmark this was at a stone circle, and the stability of these
stones was taken as an omen for the king's reign. There are exceptional
instances noted, as the serf-king Eormenric (cf. Guthred-Canute
of Northumberland), whose noble birth washed out this blot of his
captivity, and there is a curious tradition of a conqueror setting his
hound as king over a conquered province in mockery.

The king was of age at twelve. A king of seven years of age has twelve
Regents chosen in the Moot, in one case by lot, to bring him up and rule
for him till his majority. Regents are all appointed in Denmark, in
one case for lack of royal blood, one to Scania, one to Zealand, one to
Funen, two to Jutland. Underkings and Earls are appointed by kings, and
though the Earl's office is distinctly official, succession is sometimes
given to the sons of faithful fathers. The absence of a settled
succession law leads (as in Muslim States) to rebellions and plots.

Kings sometimes abdicated, giving up the crown perforce to a rival, or
in high age to a kinsman. In heathen times, kings, as Thiodwulf tells us
in the case of Domwald and Yngwere, were sometimes sacrificed for
better seasons (African fashion), and Wicar of Norway perishes, like
Iphigeneia, to procure fair winds. Kings having to lead in war, and
sometimes being willing to fight wagers of battle, are short-lived as a
rule, and assassination is a continual peril, whether by fire at a time
of feast, of which there are numerous examples, besides the classic one
on which Biarea-mal is founded and the not less famous one of Hamlet's
vengeance, or whether by steel, as with Hiartuar, or by trick, as in
Wicar's case above cited. The reward for slaying a king is in one case
120 gold lbs.; 19 "talents" of gold from each ringleader, 1 oz. of gold
from each commoner, in the story of Godfred, known as Ref's gild, "i.e.,
Fox tax". In the case of a great king, Frode, his death is concealed for
three years to avoid disturbance within and danger from without. Captive
kings were not as a rule well treated. A Slavonic king, Daxo, offers
Ragnar's son Whitesark his daughter and half his realm, or death, and
the captive strangely desires death by fire. A captive king is exposed,
chained to wild beasts, thrown into a serpent-pit, wherein Ragnar is
given the fate of the elder Gunnar in the Eddic Lays, Atlakvida. The
king is treated with great respect by his people, he is finely clad, and
his commands are carried out, however abhorrent or absurd, as long as
they do not upset customary or statute law. The king has slaves in
his household, men and women, besides his guard of housecarles and his
bearsark champions. A king's daughter has thirty slaves with her, and
the footmaiden existed exactly as in the stories of the Wicked Waiting
Maid. He is not to be awakened in his slumbers (cf. St. Olaf's Life,
where the naming of King Magnus is the result of adherence to this
etiquette). A champion weds the king's leman.

His thanes are created by the delivery of a sword, which the king
bolds by the blade and the thane takes by the hilt. (English earls were
created by the girding with a sword. "Taking treasure, and weapons
and horses, and feasting in a hall with the king" is synonymous with
thane-hood or gesith-ship in "Beowulf's Lay"). A king's thanes must
avenge him if he falls, and owe him allegiance. (This was paid in the
old English monarchies by kneeling and laying the head down at the
lord's knee.)

The trick by which the Mock-king, or King of the Beggars (parallel to
our Boy-bishop, and perhaps to that enigmatic churls' King of the "O. E.
Chronicle", s.a. 1017, Eadwiceorla-kyning) gets allegiance paid to
him, and so secures himself in his attack on the real king, is cleverly
devised. The king, besides being a counsel giver himself, and speaking
the law, has "counsellors", old and wise men, "sapientes" (like the
0. E. Thyle). The aged warrior counsellor, as Starcad here and Master
Hildebrand in the "Nibelungenlied", is one type of these persons,
another is the false counsellor, as Woden in guise of Bruni, another
the braggart, as Hunferth in "Beowulf's Lay". At "moots" where laws
are made, kings and regents chosen, cases judged, resolutions taken of
national importance, there are discussions, as in that armed most the
host.

The king has, beside his estates up and down the country, sometimes
(like Hrothgar with his palace Heorot in "Beowulf's Lay") a great fort
and treasure house, as Eormenric, whose palace may well have really
existed. There is often a primitive and negroid character about
dwellings of formidable personages, heads placed on stakes adorn their
exterior, or shields are ranged round the walls.

The provinces are ruled by removable earls appointed by the king,
often his own kinsmen, sometimes the heads of old ruling families. The
"hundreds" make up the province or subkingdom. They may be granted to
king's thanes, who became "hundred-elders". Twelve hundreds are in one
case bestowed upon a man.

The "yeoman's" estate is not only honourable but useful, as Starcad
generously and truly acknowledges. Agriculture should be fostered and
protected by the king, even at the cost of his life.

But gentle birth and birth royal place certain families above the common
body of freemen (landed or not); and for a commoner to pretend to a
king's daughter is an act of presumption, and generally rigorously
resented.

The "smith" was the object of a curious prejudice, probably akin to that
expressed in St. Patrick's "Lorica", and derived from the smith's having
inherited the functions of the savage weapon-maker with his poisons and
charms. The curious attempt to distinguish smiths into good and
useful swordsmiths and base and bad goldsmiths seems a merely modern
explanation: Weland could both forge swords and make ornaments of
metal. Starcad's loathing for a smith recalls the mockery with which the
Homeric gods treat Hephaistos.

Slavery.--As noble birth is manifest by fine eyes and personal beauty,
courage and endurance, and delicate behaviour, so the slave nature
is manifested by cowardice, treachery, unbridled lust, bad manners,
falsehood, and low physical traits. Slaves had, of course, no right
either of honour, or life, or limb. Captive ladies are sent to a
brothel; captive kings cruelly put to death. Born slaves were naturally
still less considered, they were flogged; it was disgraceful to
kill them with honourable steel; to accept a slight service from a
slave-woman was beneath old Starcad's dignity. A man who loved another
man's slave-woman, and did base service to her master to obtain her as
his consort, was looked down on. Slaves frequently ran away to escape
punishment for carelessness, or fault, or to gain liberty.




CUSTOMARY LAW.

The evidence of Saxo to archaic law and customary institutions is pretty
much (as we should expect) that to be drawn from the Icelandic Sagas,
and even from the later Icelandic rimur and Scandinavian kaempe-viser.
But it helps to complete the picture of the older stage of North
Teutonic Law, which we are able to piece together out of our various
sources, English, Icelandic, and Scandinavian. In the twilight of Yore
every glowworm is a helper to the searcher.

There are a few MAXIMS of various times, but all seemingly drawn from
custom cited or implied by Saxo as authoritative:--

"It is disgraceful to be ruled by a woman."--The great men of Teutonic
nations held to this maxim. There is no Boudicea or Maidhbh in our own
annals till after the accession of the Tudors, when Great Eliza rivals
her elder kins-women's glories. Though Tacitus expressly notices one
tribe or confederacy, the Sitones, within the compass of his Germania,
ruled by a woman, as an exceptional case, it was contrary to the feeling
of mediaeval Christendom for a woman to be emperor; it was not till late
in the Middle Ages that Spain saw a queen regnant, and France has never
yet allowed such rule. It was not till long after Saxo that the great
queen of the North, Margaret, wielded a wider sway than that rejected by
Gustavus' wayward daughter.

"The suitor ought to urge his own suit."--This, an axiom of the most
archaic law, gets evaded bit by bit till the professional advocate takes
the place of the plaintiff. "Njal's Saga", in its legal scenes, shows
the transition period, when, as at Rome, a great and skilled chief
was sought by his client as the supporter of his cause at the Moot. In
England, the idea of representation at law is, as is well known, late
and largely derived from canon law practice.

"To exact the blood-fine was as honourable as to take vengeance."--This
maxim, begotten by Interest upon Legality, established itself both in
Scandinavia and Arabia. It marks the first stage in a progress which,
if carried out wholly, substitutes law for feud. In the society of the
heathen Danes the maxim was a novelty; even in Christian Denmark men
sometimes preferred blood to fees.


MARRIAGE.--There are many reminiscences of "archaic marriage customs
in Saxo." The capture marriage has left traces in the guarded king's
daughters, the challenging of kings to fight or hand over their
daughters, in the promises to give a daughter or sister as a reward to
a hero who shall accomplish some feat. The existence of polygamy is
attested, and it went on till the days of Charles the Great and Harold
Fairhair in singular instances, in the case of great kings, and finally
disappeared before the strict ecclesiastic regulations.

But there are evidences also of later customs, such as "marriage by
purchase", already looked on as archaic in Saxo's day; and the free
women in Denmark had clearly long had a veto or refusal of a husband for
some time back, and sometimes even free choice. "Go-betweens" negotiate
marriages.

Betrothal was of course the usage. For the groom to defile an espoused
woman is a foul reproach. Gifts made to father-in-law after bridal by
bridegroom seem to denote the old bride-price. Taking the bride home in
her car was an important ceremony, and a bride is taken to her future
husband's by her father. The wedding-feast, as in France in Rabelais'
time, was a noisy and drunken and tumultuous rejoicing, when
bone-throwing was in favor, with other rough sports and jokes. The three
days after the bridal and their observance in "sword-bed" are noticed
below.

A commoner or one of slave-blood could not pretend to wed a high-born
lady. A woman would sometimes require some proof of power or courage at
her suitor's hands; thus Gywritha, like the famous lady who weds Harold
Fairhair, required her husband Siwar to be over-king of the whole land.
But in most instances the father or brother betrothed the girl, and she
consented to their choice. Unwelcome suitors perish.

The prohibited degrees were, of course, different from those established
by the mediaeval church, and brother weds brother's widow in good
archaic fashion. Foster-sister and foster-brother may marry, as Saxo
notices carefully. The Wolsung incest is not noticed by Saxo. He only
knew, apparently, the North-German form of the Niflung story. But the
reproachfulness of incest is apparent.

Birth and beauty were looked for in a bride by Saxo's heroes, and
chastity was required. The modesty of maidens in old days is eulogised
by Saxo, and the penalty for its infraction was severe: sale abroad into
slavery to grind the quern in the mud of the yard. One of the tests of
virtue is noticed, "lac in ubere".

That favourite "motif", the "Patient Grizzle", occurs, rather, however,
in the Border ballad than the Petrarcan form.

"Good wives" die with their husbands as they have vowed, or of grief for
their loss, and are wholly devoted to their interests. Among "bad wives"
are those that wed their husband's slayer, run away from their husbands,
plot against their husbands' lives. The penalty for adultery is death to
both, at husband's option--disfigurement by cutting off the nose of
the guilty woman, an archaic practice widely spread. In one case the
adulterous lady is left the choice of her own death. Married women's
Homeric duties are shown.

There is a curious story, which may rest upon fact, and not be merely
typical, where a mother who had suffered wrong forced her daughter to
suffer the same wrong.

Captive women are reduced to degrading slavery as "harlots" in one case,
according to the eleventh century English practice of Gytha.

THE FAMILY AND BLOOD REVENGE.--This duty, one of the strongest links of
the family in archaic Teutonic society, has left deep traces in Saxo.

To slay those most close in blood, even by accident, is to incur the
guilt of parricide, or kin-killing, a bootless crime, which can only be
purged by religious ceremonies; and which involves exile, lest the gods'
wrath fall on the land, and brings the curse of childlessness on the
offender until he is forgiven.

BOOTLESS CRIMES.--As among the ancient Teutons, botes and were-gilds
satisfy the injured who seek redress at law rather than by the steel.
But there are certain bootless crimes, or rather sins, that imply
"sacratio", devotion to the gods, for the clearing of the community.
Such are treason, which is punishable by hanging; by drowning in sea.

Rebellion is still more harshly treated by death and forfeiture; the
rebels' heels are bored and thonged under the sinew, as Hector's feet
were, and they are then fastened by the thongs to wild bulls, hunted
by hounds, till they are dashed to pieces (for which there are classic
parallels), or their feet are fastened with thongs to horses driven
apart, so that they are torn asunder.

For "parricide", i.e., killing within near degrees, the criminal is hung
up, apparently by the heels, with a live wolf (he having acted as a wolf
which will slay its fellows). Cunning avoidance of the guilt by trick is
shown.

For "arson" the appropriate punishment is the fire.

For "incestuous adultery" of stepson with his stepmother, hanging is
awarded to the man. In the same case Swanwhite, the woman, is punished,
by treading to death with horses. A woman accomplice in adultery is
treated to what Homer calls a "stone coat." Incestuous adultery is a
foul slur.

For "witchcraft", the horror of heathens, hanging was the penalty.

"Private revenge" sometimes deliberately inflicts a cruel death for
atrocious wrong or insult, as when a king, enraged at the slaying of his
son and seduction of his daughter, has the offender hanged, an instance
famous in Nathan's story, so that Hagbard's hanging and hempen necklace
were proverbial.

For the slayer by a cruel death of their captive father, Ragnar's sons
act the blood-eagle on Ella, and salt his flesh. There is an undoubted
instance of this act of vengeance (the symbolic meaning of which is not
clear as yet) in the "Orkney Saga".

But the story of Daxo and of Ref's gild show that for such wrongs
were-gilds were sometimes exacted, and that they were considered highly
honourable to the exactor.

Among OFFENCES NOT BOOTLESS, and left to individual pursuit, are:--

"Highway robbery".--There are several stories of a type such as that of
Ingemund and Ioknl (see "Landnamaboc") told by Saxo of highwaymen; and
an incident of the kind that occurs in the Theseus story (the Bent-tree,
which sprung back and slew the wretch bound to it) is given. The
romantic trick of the mechanic bed, by which a steel-shod beam is
let fall on the sleeping traveller, also occurs. Slain highwaymen are
gibbeted as in Christian days.

"Assassination", as distinct from manslaughter in vengeance for a wrong,
is not very common. A hidden mail-coat foils a treacherous javelin-cast
(cf. the Story of Olaf the Stout and the Blind King, Hrorec); murderers
lurk spear-armed at the threshold, sides, as in the Icelandic Sagas; a
queen hides a spear-head in her gown, and murders her husband (cf.
Olaf Tryggvason's Life). Godfred was murdered by his servant (and
Ynglingatal).

"Burglary".--The crafty discovery of the robber of the treasury by
Hadding is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less
elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere
moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of
letting the tongue feed the gallows.

Among other disgraceful acts, that make the offender infamous, but do
not necessarily involve public action:--

"Manslaughter in Breach of Hospitality".--Probably any gross breach of
hospitality was disreputable and highly abhorred, but "guest-slaughter"
is especially mentioned. The ethical question as to whether a man should
slay his guest or forego his just vengeance was often a "probleme du
jour" in the archaic times to which these traditions witness. Ingeld
prefers his vengeance, but Thuriswend, in the Lay cited by Paul the
Deacon, chooses to protect his guest. Heremod slew his messmates in his
wrath, and went forth alone into exile. ("Beowulf's Lay".)

"Suicide".--This was more honourable than what Earl Siward of
Northumberland called a "cow-death." Hadding resolves to commit suicide
at his friend's death. Wermund resolves to commit suicide if his son be
slain (in hopelessness of being able to avenge him, cf. "Njal's Saga",
where the hero, a Christian, prefers to perish in his burning house than
live dishonoured, "for I am an old man and little fitted to avenge my
sons, but I will not live in shame"). Persons commit suicide by slaying
each other in time of famine; while in England (so Baeda tells) they
"decliffed" themselves in companies, and, as in the comic little
Icelandic tale Gautrec's birth, a Tarpeian death is noted as the
customary method of relieving folks from the hateful starvation
death. It is probable that the violent death relieved the ghost or
the survivors of some inconveniences which a "straw death" would have
brought about.

"Procedure by Wager of Battle".--This archaic process pervades Saxo's
whole narrative. It is the main incident of many of the sagas from
which he drew. It is one of the chief characteristics of early Teutonic
custom-law, and along with "Cormac's Saga", "Landnamaboc", and the
Walter Saga, our author has furnished us with most of the information we
have upon its principles and practice.

Steps in the process are the Challenge, the Acceptance and Settlement of
Conditions, the Engagement, the Treatment of the vanquished, the Reward
of the conqueror, and there are rules touching each of these, enough
almost to furnish a kind of "Galway code".

A challenge could not, either to war or wager of battle, be refused with
honor, though a superior was not bound to fight an inferior in rank. An
ally might accept for his principal, or a father for a son, but it was
not honourable for a man unless helpless to send a champion instead of
himself.

Men were bound to fight one to one, and one man might decline to fight
two at once. Great champions sometimes fought against odds.

The challenged man chose the place of battle, and possibly fixed the
time. This was usually an island in the river.

The regular weapons were swords and shields for men of gentle blood.
They fought by alternate separate strokes; the senior had the first
blow. The fight must go on face to face without change of place; for the
ground was marked out for the combatants, as in our prize ring, though
one can hardly help fancying that the fighting ground so carefully
described in "Cormac's Saga", ch. 10, may have been Saxo's authority.
The combatants change places accidentally in the struggle in one story.

The combat might last, like Cuchullin's with Ferdia, several days; a
nine days' fight occurs; but usually a few blows settled the matter.
Endurance was important, and we are told of a hero keeping himself in
constant training by walking in a mail coat.

The conqueror ought not to slay his man if he were a stripling, or
maimed, and had better take his were-gild for his life, the holmslausn
or ransom of "Cormac's Saga" (three marks in Iceland); but this was
a mere concession to natural pity, and he might without loss of honor
finish his man, and cut off his head, though it was proper, if the slain
adversary has been a man of honor, to bury him afterward.

The stakes are sometimes a kingdom or a kingdom's tribute, often a lady,
or the combatants fought for "love" or the point of honor. Giants
and noted champions challenge kings for their daughters (as in the
fictitious parts of the Icelandic family sagas) in true archaic
fashion, and in true archaic fashion the prince rescues the lady from a
disgusting and evil fate by his prowess.

The champion's fee or reward when he was fighting for his principal and
came off successful was heavy--many lands and sixty slaves. Bracelets
are given him; a wound is compensated for at ten gold pieces; a fee for
killing a king is 120 of the same.

Of the incidents of the combat, beside fair sleight of fence, there is
the continual occurrence of the sword-blunting spell, often cast by the
eye of the sinister champion, and foiled by the good hero, sometimes
by covering his blade with thin skin, sometimes by changing the blade,
sometimes by using a mace or club.

The strength of this tradition sufficiently explains the necessity of
the great oath against magic taken by both parties in a wager of battle
in Christian England.

The chief combats mentioned by Saxo are:--

Sciold v. Attila. Sciold v. Scate, for the hand of Alfhild. Gram v.
Swarin and eight more, for the crown of the Swedes. Hadding v. Toste, by
challenge. Frode v. Hunding, on challenge. Frode v. Hacon, on challenge.
Helge v. Hunding, by challenge at Stad. Agnar v. Bearce, by challenge.
Wizard v. Danish champions, for truage of the Slavs. Wizard v. Ubbe,
for truage of the Slavs. Coll v. Horwendill, on challenge. Athisl v.
Frowine, meeting in battle. Athisl v. Ket and Wig, on challenge. Uffe
v. Prince of Saxony and Champion, by challenge. Frode v. Froger, on
challenge. Eric v. Grep's brethren, on challenge, twelve a side. Eric
v. Alrec, by challenge. Hedin v. Hogni, the mythic everlasting battle.
Arngrim v. Scalc, by challenge. Arngrim v. Egtheow, for truage of
Permland. Arrow-Odd and Hialmar v. twelve sons of Arngrim Samsey fight.
Ane Bow-swayer v. Beorn, by challenge. Starkad v. Wisin, by challenge.
Starkad v. Tanlie, by challenge. Starkad v. Wasce--Wilzce, by challenge.
Starkad v. Hame, by challenge. Starkad v. Angantheow and eight of
his brethren, on challenge. Halfdan v. Hardbone and six champions,
on challenge. Halfdan v. Egtheow, by challenge. Halfdan v. Grim, on
challenge. Halfdan v. Ebbe, on challenge, by moonlight. Halfdan v.
Twelve champions, on challenge. Halfdan v. Hildeger, on challenge. Ole
v. Skate and Hiale, on challenge. Homod and Thole v. Beorn and Thore, by
challenge. Ref. v. Gaut, on challenge. Ragnar and three sons v. Starcad
of Sweden and seven sons, on challenge.

CIVIL PROCEDURE.--"Oaths" are an important art of early procedure, and
noticed by Saxo; one calling the gods to witness and therefor, it is
understood, to avenge perjury if he spake not truth.

"Testification", or calling witnesses to prove the steps of a legal
action, was known, "Glum's Saga" and "Landnamaboc", and when a manslayer
proceeded (in order to clear himself of murder) to announce the
manslaughter as his act, he brings the dead man's head as his proof,
exactly as the hero in the folk-tales brings the dragon's head or tongue
as his voucher.

A "will" is spoken of. This seems to be the solemn declaration of
a childless man to his kinsfolk, recommending some person as his
successor. Nothing more was possible before written wills were
introduced by the Christian clergy after the Roman fashion.




STATUTE LAWS.

"Lawgivers".--The realm of Custom had already long been curtailed by the
conquests of Law when Saxo wrote, and some epochs of the invasion were
well remembered, such as Canute's laws. But the beginnings were dim, and
there were simply traditions of good and bad lawyers of the past; such
were "Sciold" first of all the arch-king, "Frode" the model lawgiver,
"Helge" the tyrant, "Ragnar" the shrewd conqueror.

"Sciold", the patriarch, is made by tradition to fulfil, by abolishing
evil customs and making good laws, the ideal of the Saxon and Frankish
Coronation oath formula (which may well go back with its two first
clauses to heathen days). His fame is as widely spread. However, the
only law Saxo gives to him has a story to it that he does not plainly
tell. Sciold had a freedman who repaid his master's manumission of him
by the ingratitude of attempting his life. Sciold thereupon decrees
the unlawfulness of manumissions, or (as Saxo puts it), revoked all
manumissions, thus ordaining perpetual slavery on all that were or might
become slaves. The heathen lack of pity noticed in Alfred's preface
to "Gregory's Handbook" is illustrated here by contrast with the
philosophic humanity of the Civil Law, and the sympathy of the mediaeval
Church.

But FRODE (known also to the compiler of "Beowulf's Lay", 2025) had, in
the Dane's eyes, almost eclipsed Sciold as conqueror and lawgiver. His
name Frode almost looks as if his epithet Sapiens had become his popular
appellation, and it befits him well. Of him were told many stories, and
notably the one related of our Edwin by Bede (and as it has been told by
many men of many rulers since Bede wrote, and before). Frode was able to
hang up an arm-ring of gold in three parts of his kingdom that no thief
for many years dared touch. How this incident (according to our version
preserved by Saxo), brought the just king to his end is an archaic and
interesting story. Was this ring the Brosinga men?

Saxo has even recorded the Laws of Frode in four separate bits, which we
give as A, B, C, D.

A. is mainly a civil and military code of archaic kind:

(a) The division of spoil shall be--gold to captains, silver to
privates, arms to champions, ships to be shared by all. Cf. Jomswickinga
S. on the division of spoil by the law of the pirate community of Jom.

(b) No house stuff to be locked; if a man used a lock he must pay a gold
mark.

(c) He who spares a thief must bear his punishment.

(d) The coward in battle is to forfeit all rights (cf. "Beowulf", 2885).

(e) Women to have free choice (or, at least, veto) in taking husbands.

(f) A free woman that weds a slave loses rank and freedom (cf. Roman
Law).

(g) A man must marry a girl he has seduced.

(h) An adulterer to be mutilated at pleasure of injured husband.

(i) Where Dane robbed Dane, the thief to pay double and peace-breach.

(k) Receivers of stolen goods suffer forfeiture and flogging at most.

(l) Deserter bearing shield against his countrymen to lose life and
property.

(m) Contempt of fyrd-summons or call to military service involves
outlawry and exile.

(n) Bravery in battle to bring about increase in rank (cf. the old
English "Ranks of Men").

(o) No suit to lie on promise and pledge; fine of a gold lb. for asking
pledge.

(p) Wager of battle is to be the universal mode of proof.

(q) If an alien kill a Dane two aliens must suffer. (This is practically
the same principle as appears in the half weregild of the Welsh in West
Saxon Law.)

B. An illustration of the more capricious of the old enactments and the
jealousy of antique kings.

(a) Loss of gifts sent to the king involves the official responsible; he
shall be hanged. (This is introduced as illustration of the cleverness
of Eric and the folly of Coll.)

C. Saxo associates another set of enactments with the completion of a
successful campaign of conquest over the Ruthenians, and shows Frode
chiefly as a wise and civilising statesman, making conquest mean
progress.

(a) Every free householder that fell in war was to be set in his barrow
with horse and arms (cf. "Vatzdaela Saga", ch. 2).

The body-snatcher was to be punished by death and the lack of sepulture.

Earl or king to be burned in his own ship.

Ten sailors may be burnt on one ship.

(b) Ruthenians to have the same law of war as Danes.

(c) Ruthenians must adopt Danish sale-marriage. (This involves
the abolition of the Baltic custom of capture-marriage. That
capture-marriage was a bar to social progress appears in the legislation
of Richard II, directed against the custom as carried out on the borders
of the Palatine county of Chester, while cases such as the famous one of
Rob Roy's sons speak to its late continuance in Scotland. In Ireland it
survived in a stray instance or two into this century, and songs like
"William Riley" attest the sympathy of the peasant with the eloping
couple.)

(d) A veteran, one of the Doughty, must be such a man as will attack one
foe, will stand two, face three without withdrawing more than a little,
and be content to retire only before four. (One of the traditional
folk-sayings respecting the picked men, the Doughty or Old Guard, as
distinguished from the Youth or Young Guard, the new-comers in the
king's Company of House-carles. In Harald Hardrede's Life the Norwegians
dread those English house-carles, "each of whom is a match for four,"
who formed the famous guard that won Stamford Bridge and fell about
their lord, a sadly shrunken band, at Senlake.)

(f) The house-carles to have winter-pay. The house-carle three pieces
of silver, a hired soldier two pieces, a soldier who had finished his
service one piece.

(The treatment of the house-carles gave Harald Harefoot a reputation
long remembered for generosity, and several old Northern kings have
won their nicknames by their good or ill feeding and rewarding their
comitatus.)

D. Again a civil code, dealing chiefly with the rights of travellers.

(a) Seafarers may use what gear they find (the "remis" of the text may
include boat or tackle).

(b) No house is to be locked, nor coffer, but all thefts to be
compensated threefold. (This, like A, b, which it resembles, seems a
popular tradition intended to show the absolute security of Frode's
reign of seven or three hundred years. It is probably a gloss wrongly
repeated.)

(c) A traveller may claim a single supper; if he take more he is a
thief (the mark of a prae-tabernal era when hospitality was waxing cold
through misuse).

(d) Thief and accomplices are to be punished alike, being hung up by
a line through the sinews and a wolf fastened beside. (This, which
contradicts A, i, k, and allots to theft the punishment proper for
parricide, seems a mere distorted tradition.)

But beside just Frode, tradition spoke of the unjust Kinge HELGE, whose
laws represent ill-judged harshness. They were made for conquered races,
(a) the Saxons and (b) the Swedes.

(a) Noble and freedmen to have the same were-gild (the lower, of course,
the intent being to degrade all the conquered to one level, and to allow
only the lowest were-gild of a freedman, fifty pieces, probably, in the
tradition).

(b) No remedy for wrong done to a Swede by a Dane to be legally
recoverable. (This is the traditional interpretation of the conqueror's
haughty dealing; we may compare it with the Middle-English legends of
the pride of the Dane towards the conquered English. The Tradition sums
up the position in such concrete forms as this Law of Helge's.)

Two statutes of RAGNAR are mentioned:--

(a) That any householder should give up to his service in war the worst
of his children, or the laziest of his slaves (a curious tradition, and
used by Saxo as an opportunity for patriotic exaltation).

(b) That all suits shall be absolutely referred to the judgment of
twelve chosen elders (Lodbroc here appearing in the strange character of
originator of trial by jury).

"Tributes".--Akin to laws are the tributes decreed and imposed by kings
and conquerors of old. Tribute infers subjection in archaic law. The
poll-tax in the fourteenth century in England was unpopular, because of
its seeming to degrade Englishmen to the level of Frenchmen, who paid
tribute like vanquished men to their absolute lord, as well as for other
reasons connected with the collection of the tax.

The old fur tax (mentioned in "Egil's Saga") is here ascribed to FRODE,
who makes the Finns pay him, every three years, a car full or sledge
full of skins for every ten heads; and extorts one skin per head from
the Perms. It is Frode, too (though Saxo has carved a number of Frodes
out of one or two kings of gigantic personality), that made the Saxons
pay a poll-tax, a piece of money per head, using, like William the
Conqueror, his extraordinary revenue to reward his soldiers, whom he
first regaled with double pay. But on the conquered folks rebelling,
he marked their reduction by a tax of a piece of money on every limb a
cubit long, a "limb-geld" still more hateful than the "neb-geld."

HOTHERUS (Hodr) had set a tribute on the Kurlanders and Swedes, and
HROLF laid a tribute on the conquered Swedes.

GODEFRIDUS-GOTRIC is credited with a third Saxon tribute, a heriot of
100 snow-white horses payable to each Danish king at his succession, and
by each Saxon chief on his accession: a statement that, recalling sacred
snow-white horses kept in North Germany of yore makes one wish for
fuller information. But Godefridus also exacted from the Swedes the
"Ref-gild", or Fox-money; for the slaying of his henchman Ref, twelve
pieces of gold from each man of rank, one from every commoner. And his
Friesland tribute is stranger still, nor is it easy to understand from
Saxo's account. There was a long hall built, 240 feet, and divided up
into twelve "chases" of 20 feet each (probably square). There was a
shield set up at one end, and the taxpayers hurled their money at it; if
it struck so as to sound, it was good; if not, it was forfeit, but not
reckoned in the receipt. This (a popular version, it may be, of some
early system of treasury test) was abolished, so the story goes, by
Charles the Great.

RAGNAR'S exaction from Daxo, his son's slayer, was a yearly tribute
brought by himself and twelve of his elders barefoot, resembling in part
such submissions as occur in the Angevin family history, the case of the
Calais burgesses, and of such criminals as the Corporation of Oxford,
whose penance was only finally renounced by the local patriots in our
own day.




WAR.

"Weapons".--The sword is the weapon par excellence in Saxo's narrative,
and he names several by name, famous old blades like our royal Curtana,
which some believed was once Tristrem's, and that sword of Carlus, whose
fortunes are recorded in Irish annals. Such are "Snyrtir", Bearce's
sword; "Hothing", Agnar's blade; "Lauf", or "Leaf", Bearce's sword;
"Screp", Wermund's sword, long buried and much rust-eaten, but sharp and
trusty, and known by its whistle; Miming's sword ("Mistletoe"), which
slew Balder. Wainhead's curved blade seems to be a halbert; "Lyusing"
and "Hwiting", Ragnald of Norway's swords; "Logthe", the sword of Ole
Siward's son.

The "war-club" occurs pretty frequently. But it is usually introduced as
a special weapon of a special hero, who fashions a gold-headed club
to slay one that steel cannot touch, or who tears up a tree, like the
Spanish knight in the ballad, or who uses a club to counteract spells
that blunt steel. The bat-shapen archaic rudder of a ship is used as a
club in the story of the Sons of Arngrim.

The "spear" plays no particular part in Saxo: even Woden's spear Gungne
is not prominent.

"Bows and arrows" are not often spoken of, but archer heroes, such as
Toki, Ane Bow-swayer, and Orwar-Odd, are known. Slings and stones are
used.

The shield, of all defensive armour, is far the most prominent. They
were often painted with devices, such as Hamlet's shield, Hildiger's
Swedish shield. Dr. Vigfusson has shown the importance of these painted
shields in the poetic history of the Scandinavians.

A red shield is a signal of peace. Shields are set round ramparts on
land as round ships at sea.

"Mail-coats" are worn. Frode has one charmed against steel. Hother has
another; a mail-coat of proof is mentioned and their iron meshes are
spoken of.

"Helmets" are used, but not so carefully described as in "Beowulf's
Lay"; crested helmets and a gilded helmet occur in Bearca-mal and in
another poem.

"Banners" serve as rallying points in the battle and on the march. The
Huns' banners are spoken of in the classic passage for the description
of a huge host invading a country. Bearcamal talks of golden banners.

"Horns" (1) were blown pp at the beginning of the engagement and for
signalling. The gathering of the host was made by delivery of a wooden
arrow painted to look like iron.

"Tactics".--The hand-to-hand fight of the wager of battle with sword
and shield, and the fighting in ranks and the wedge-column at close
quarters, show that the close infantry combat was the main event of the
battle. The preliminary hurling of stones, and shooting of arrows,
and slinging of pebbles, were harassing and annoying, but seldom
sufficiently important to affect the result of the main engagement.

Men ride to battle, but fight on foot; occasionally an aged king is
car-borne to the fray, and once the car, whether by Saxo's adorning
hand, or by tradition, is scythe-armed.

The gathered host is numbered, once, where, as with Xerxes, counting was
too difficult, by making each man as he passed put a pebble in a pile
(which piles survive to mark the huge size of Frode's army). This is,
of course, a folktale, explaining the pebble-hills and illustrating the
belief in Frode's power; but armies were mustered by such expedients of
old. Burton tells of an African army each man of whom presented an egg,
as a token of his presence and a means of taking the number of the host.

We hear of men marching in light order without even scabbards, and
getting over the ice in socks.

The war equipment and habits of the Irish, light armoured, clipped at
back of head, hurling the javelin backwards in their feigned flight; of
the Slavs, small blue targets and long swords; of the Finns, with their
darts and skees, are given.

Watches are kept, and it is noted that "uht", the early watch
after midnight, is the worst to be attacked in (the duke's
two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage being needed, and the darkness and
cold helping the enemy).

Spies were, of course, slain if discovered. But we have instances of
kings and heroes getting into foeman's camps in disguise (cf. stories of
Alfred and Anlaf).

The order of battle of Bravalla fight is given, and the ideal array of a
host. To Woden is ascribed the device of the boar's head, hamalt fylking
(the swine-head array of Manu's Indian kings), the terrible column with
wedge head which could cleave the stoutest line.

The host of Ring has men from Wener, Wermland, Gotaelf, Thotn, Wick,
Thelemark, Throndham, Sogn, Firths, Fialer, Iceland; Sweden, Gislamark,
Sigtun, Upsala, Pannonia.

The host of Harold had men from Iceland, the Danish provinces, Frisia,
Lifland; Slavs, and men from Jom, Aland, and Sleswick.

The battle of Bravalla is said to have been won by the Gotland archers
and the men of Throndham, and the Dales. The death of Harald by
treachery completed the defeat, which began when Ubbe fell (after he had
broken the enemy's van) riddled with arrows.

The defeated, unless they could fly, got little quarter. One-fifth only
of the population of a province are said to have survived an invasion.
After sea-battles (always necessarily more deadly) the corpses choke the
harbours. Seventy sea-kings are swept away in one sea-fight. Heads seem
to have been taken in some cases, but not as a regular Teutonic usage,
and the practice, from its being attributed to ghosts and aliens,
must have already been considered savage by Saxo, and probably by his
informants and authorities.

Prisoners were slaves; they might be killed, put to cruel death,
outraged, used as slaves, but the feeling in favour of mercy was
growing, and the cruelty of Eormenric, who used tortures to his
prisoners, of Rothe, who stripped his captives, and of Fro, who sent
captive ladies to a brothel in insult, is regarded with dislike.

Wounds were looked on as honourable, but they must be in front or
honourably got. A man who was shot through the buttocks, or wounded in
the back, was laughed at and disgraced. We hear of a mother helping her
wounded son out of battle.

That much of human interest centered round war is evident by the mass
of tradition that surrounds the subject in Saxo, both in its public and
private aspects. Quaint is the analysis of the four kinds of warriors:
(a) The Veterans, or Doughty, who kill foes and spare flyers; (b) the
Young men who kill foes and flyers too; (c) the well-to-do, landed, and
propertied men of the main levy, who neither fight for fear nor fly for
shame; (d) the worthless, last to fight and first to fly; and curious
are the remarks about married and unmarried troops, a matter which Chaka
pondered over in later days. Homeric speeches precede the fight.

"Stratagems of War" greatly interested Saxo (probably because Valerius
Maximus, one of his most esteemed models, was much occupied with such
matters), so that he diligently records the military traditions of the
notably skillful expedients of famous commanders of old.

There is the device for taking a town by means of the "pretended death"
of the besieging general, a device ascribed to Hastings and many more
commanders (see Steenstrup Normannerne); the plan of "firing" a besieged
town by fire-bearing birds, ascribed here to Fridlev, in the case of
Dublin to Hadding against Duna (where it was foiled by all tame birds
being chased out of the place).

There is the "Birnam Wood" stratagem, by which men advanced behind a
screen of boughs, which is even used for the concealment of ships, and
the curious legend (occurring in Irish tradition also, and recalling
Capt. B. Hall's "quaker gun" story) by which a commander bluffs off his
enemy by binding his dead to stakes in rows, as if they were living men.

Less easy to understand are the "brazen horses" or "machines" driven
into the close lines of the enemy to crush and open them, an invention
of Gewar. The use of hooked weapons to pull down the foes' shields and
helmets was also taught to Hother by Gewar.

The use of black tents to conceal encampment; the defence of a pass by
hurling rocks from the heights; the bridge of boats across the Elbe;
and the employment of spies, and the bold venture, ascribed in our
chronicles to Alfred and Anlaf, of visiting in disguise the enemy's
camp, is here attributed to Frode, who even assumed women's clothes for
the purpose.

Frode is throughout the typical general, as he is the typical statesman
and law-giver of archaic Denmark.

There are certain heathen usages connected with war, as the hurling of
a javelin or shooting of an arrow over the enemy's ranks as a "sacratio"
to Woden of the foe at the beginning of a battle. This is recorded in
the older vernacular authorities also, in exact accordance with the
Homeric usage, "Odyssey" xxiv, 516-595.

The dedication of part of the spoils to the god who gave good omens for
the war is told of the heathen Baltic peoples; but though, as Sidonius
records, it had once prevailed among the Saxons, and, as other witnesses
add, among the Scandinavian people, the tradition is not clearly
preserved by Saxo.

"Sea and Sea Warfare."--As might be expected, there is much mention of
Wicking adventure and of maritime warfare in Saxo.

Saxo tells of Asmund's huge ship (Gnod), built high that he might shoot
down on the enemy's craft; he speaks of a ship (such as Godwin gave as
a gift to the king his master), and the monk of St. Bertin and the
court-poets have lovingly described a ship with gold-broidered sails,
gilt masts, and red-dyed rigging. One of his ships has, like the ships
in the Chansons de Geste, a carbuncle for a lantern at the masthead.
Hedin signals to Frode by a shield at the masthead. A red shield was a
peace signal, as noted above. The practice of "strand-hewing", a great
feature in Wicking-life (which, so far as the victualling of raw meat
by the fishing fleets, and its use raw, as Mr. P. H. Emerson informs
me, still survives), is spoken of. There was great fear of monsters
attacking them, a fear probably justified by such occasional attacks of
angry whales as Melville (founding his narrative on repeated facts) has
immortalised. The whales, like Moby Dick, were uncanny, and inspired by
troll-women or witches (cf. "Frithiof Saga" and the older "Lay of
Atle and Rimegerd"). The clever sailing of Hadding, by which he eludes
pursuit, is tantalising, for one gathers that, Saxo knows the details
that he for some reason omits. Big fleets of 150 and a monster armada of
3,000 vessels are recorded.

The ships were moved by oars and sails; they had rudders, no doubt such
as the Gokstad ship, for the hero Arrow-Odd used a rudder as a weapon.

"Champions".--Professed fighting men were often kept by kings and
earls about their court as useful in feud and fray. Harald Fairhair's
champions are admirably described in the contemporary Raven Song by
Hornclofe--

     "Wolf-coats they call them that in battle
     Bellow into bloody shields.
     They wear wolves' hides when they come into the fight,
     And clash their weapons together."

and Saxo's sources adhere closely to this pattern.

These "bear-sarks", or wolf-coats of Harald give rise to an O. N. term,
"bear-sarks' way", to describe the frenzy of fight and fury which such
champions indulged in, barking and howling, and biting their shield-rims
(like the ferocious "rook" in the narwhale ivory chessmen in the British
Museum) till a kind of state was produced akin to that of the Malay when
he has worked himself up to "run-a-muck." There seems to have been in
the 10th century a number of such fellows about unemployed, who
became nuisances to their neighbours by reason of their bullying and
highhandedness. Stories are told in the Icelandic sagas of the way such
persons were entrapped and put to death by the chiefs they served when
they became too troublesome. A favourite (and fictitious) episode in
an "edited" Icelandic saga is for the hero to rescue a lady promised to
such a champion (who has bullied her father into consent) by slaying the
ruffian. It is the same "motif" as Guy of Warwick and the Saracen lady,
and one of the regular Giant and Knight stories.

Beside men-warriors there were "women-warriors" in the North, as Saxo
explains. He describes shield-maidens, as Alfhild, Sela, Rusila
(the Ingean Ruadh, or Red Maid of the Irish Annals, as Steenstrup so
ingeniously conjectures); and the three she-captains, Wigbiorg, who fell
on the field, Hetha, who was made queen of Zealand, and Wisna, whose
hand Starcad cut off, all three fighting manfully at Bravalla fight.




SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS.

"Feasts".--The hall-dinner was an important feature in the old Teutonic
court-life. Many a fine scene in a saga takes place in the hall while
the king and his men are sitting over their ale. The hall decked with
hangings, with its fires, lights, plate and provisions, appears in Saxo
just as in the Eddic Lays, especially Rigsmal, and the Lives of the
Norwegian Kings and Orkney Earls.

The order of seats is a great point of archaic manners. Behaviour at
table was a matter of careful observance. The service, especially that
of the cup-bearer, was minutely regulated by etiquette. An honoured
guest was welcomed by the host rising to receive him and giving him a
seat near himself, but less distinguished visitors were often victims to
the rough horseplay of the baser sort, and of the wanton young gentleman
at court. The food was simple, boiled beef and pork, and mutton without
sauce, ale served in horns from the butt. Roast meat, game, sauces,
mead, and flagons set on the table, are looked on by Starcad as foreign
luxuries, and Germany was credited with luxurious cookery.

"Mimes and jugglers", who went through the country or were attached to
the lord's court to amuse the company, were a despised race because of
their ribaldry, obscenity, cowardice, and unabashed self-debasement;
and their newfangled dances and piping were loathsome to the old
court-poets, who accepted the harp alone as an instrument of music.

The story that once a king went to war with his jugglers and they ran
away, would represent the point of view of the old house-carle, who
was neglected, though "a first-class fighting man", for these debauched
foreign buffoons.




SUPERNATURAL BEINGS.

GODS AND GODDESSES.--The gods spring, according to Saxo's belief, from
a race of sorcerers, some of whom rose to pre-eminence and expelled and
crushed the rest, ending the "wizard-age", as the wizards had ended the
monster or "giant-age". That they were identic with the classic gods he
is inclined to believe, but his difficulty is that in the week-days we
have Jove : Thor; Mercury : Woden; whereas it is perfectly well known
that Mercury is Jove's son, and also that Woden is the father of Thor--a
comic "embarras". That the persians the heathens worshipped as gods
existed, and that they were men and women false and powerful, Saxo
plainly believes. He has not Snorre's appreciation of the humorous side
of the mythology. He is ironic and scornful, but without the kindly,
naive fun of the Icelander.

The most active god, the Dane's chief god (as Frey is the Swede's god,
and patriarch), is "Woden". He appears in heroic life as patron of great
heroes and kings. Cf. "Hyndla-Lay", where it is said of Woden:--

     "Let us pray the Father of Hosts to be gracious to us!
     He granteth and giveth gold to his servants,
     He gave Heremod a helm and mail-coat,
     And Sigmund a sword to take.
     He giveth victory to his sons, to his followers wealth,
     Ready speech to his children and wisdom to men.
     Fair wind to captains, and song to poets;
     He giveth luck in love to many a hero."

He appears under various disguises and names, but usually as a one-eyed
old man, cowled and hooded; sometimes with another, bald and ragged, as
before the battle Hadding won; once as "Hroptr", a huge man skilled in
leechcraft, to Ragnar's son Sigfrid.

Often he is a helper in battle or doomer of feymen. As "Lysir", a rover
of the sea, he helps Hadding. As veteran slinger and archer he helps his
favourite Hadding; as charioteer, "Brune", he drives Harald to his death
in battle. He teaches Hadding how to array his troops. As "Yggr" the
prophet he advises the hero and the gods. As "Wecha" (Waer) the leech he
woos Wrinda. He invented the wedge array. He can grant charmed lives to
his favourites against steel. He prophesies their victories and death.
He snatches up one of his disciples, sets him on his magic horse that
rides over seas in the air, as in Skida-runa the god takes the beggar
over the North Sea. His image (like that of Frey in the Swedish story
of Ogmund dytt and Gunnar helming, "Flatey book", i, 335) could speak by
magic power.

Of his life and career Saxo gives several episodes.

Woden himself dwelt at Upsala and Byzantium (Asgard); and the northern
kings sent him a golden image ring-bedecked, which he made to speak
oracles. His wife Frigga stole the bracelets and played him false with a
servant, who advised her to destroy and rob the image.

When Woden was away (hiding the disgrace brought on him by Frigga his
wife), an imposter, Mid Odin, possibly Loke in disguise, usurped his
place at Upsala, instituted special drink-offerings, fled to Finland on
Woden's return, and was slain by the Fins and laid in barrow. But
the barrow smote all that approached it with death, till the body was
unearthed, beheaded, and impaled, a well-known process for stopping the
haunting of an obnoxious or dangerous ghost.

Woden had a son Balder, rival of Hother for the love of Nanna, daughter
of King Gewar. Woden and Thor his son fought for him against Hother,
but in vain, for Hother won the laity and put Balder to shameful flight;
however, Balder, half-frenzied by his dreams of Nanna, in turn drove him
into exile (winning the lady); finally Hother, befriended hy luck and
the Wood Maidens, to whom he owed his early successes and his magic
coat, belt, and girdle (there is obvious confusion here in the text), at
last met Balder and stabbed him in the side. Of this wound Balder died
in three days, as was foretold by the awful dream in which Proserpina
(Hela) appeared to him. Balder's grand burial, his barrow, and the magic
flood which burst from it when one Harald tried to break into it, and
terrified the robbers, are described.

The death of Balder led Woden to seek revenge. Hrossthiof the wizard,
whom he consulted, told him he must beget a son by "Wrinda" (Rinda,
daughter of the King of the Ruthenians), who should avenge his
half-brother.

Woden's wooing is the best part of this story, half spoilt, however,
by euhemeristic tone and lack of epic dignity. He woos as a victorious
warrior, and receives a cuff; as a generous goldsmith, and gets a
buffet; as a handsome soldier, earning a heavy knock-down blow; but in
the garb of a women as Wecha (Wakr), skilled in leechcraft, he won his
way by trickery; and ("Wale") "Bous" was born, who, after some years,
slew Hother in battle, and died himself of his wounds. Bous' barrow
in Bohusland, Balder's haven, Balder's well, are named as local
attestations of the legend, which is in a late form, as it seems.

The story of Woden's being banished for misbehaviour, and especially
for sorcery and for having worn woman's attire to trick Wrinda, his
replacement by "Wuldor" ("Oller"), a high priest who assumed Woden's
name and flourished for ten years, but was ultimately expelled by the
returning Woden, and killed by the Danes in Sweden, is in the same
style. But Wuldor's bone vessel is an old bit of genuine tradition
mangled. It would cross the sea as well as a ship could, by virtue of
certain spells marked on it.

Of "Frey", who appears as "satrapa" of the gods at Upsala, and as the
originator of human sacrifice, and as appeased by black victims, at a
sacrifice called Froblod (Freys-blot) instituted by Hadding, who began
it as an atonement for having slain a sea-monster, a deed for which he
had incurred a curse. The priapic and generative influences of Frey are
only indicated by a curious tradition mentioned. It almost looks as
if there had once been such an institution at Upsala as adorned the
Phoenician temples, under Frey's patronage and for a symbolic means of
worship.

"Thunder", or "Thor", is Woden's son, strongest of gods or men, patron
of Starcad, whom he turned, by pulling off four arms, from a monster to
a man.

He fights by Woden's side and Balder's against Hother, by whose magic
wand his club (hammer) was lopped off part of its shaft, a wholly
different and, a much later version than the one Snorre gives in the
prose Edda. Saxo knows of Thor's journey to the haunt of giant Garfred
(Geirrod) and his three daughters, and of the hurling of the iron
"bloom", and of the crushing of the giantesses, though he does not seem
to have known of the river-feats of either the ladies or Thor, if we may
judge (never a safe thing wholly) by his silence.

Whether "Tew" is meant by the Mars of the Song of the Voice is not
evident. Saxo may only be imitating the repeated catch-word "war" of the
original.

"Loke" appears as Utgard-Loke, Loke of the skirts of the World, as
it were; is treated as a venomous giant bound in agony under a
serpent-haunted cavern (no mention is made of "Sigyn" or her pious
ministry).

"Hela" seems to be meant by Saxo's Proserpina.

"Nanna" is the daughter of Gewar, and Balder sees her bathing and falls
in love with her, as madly as Frey with Gertha in Skirnismal.

"Freya", the mistress of Od, the patroness of Othere the homely, the
sister of Frey-Frode, and daughter of Niord-Fridlaf, appears as Gunwara
Eric's love and Syritha Ottar's love and the hair-clogged maiden, as Dr.
Rydberg has shown.

The gods can disguise their form, change their shape, are often met in
a mist, which shrouds them save from the right person; they appear
and disappear at will. For the rest they have the mental and physical
characteristics of the kings and queens they protect or persecute
so capriciously. They can be seen by making a magic sign and looking
through a witch's arm held akimbo. They are no good comates for men or
women, and to meddle with a goddess or nymph or giantess was to ensure
evil or death for a man. The god's loves were apparently not always so
fatal, though there seems to be some tradition to that effect. Most of
the god-sprung heroes are motherless or unborn (i.e., born like Macduff
by the Caesarean operation)--Sigfred, in the Eddic Lays for instance.

Besides the gods, possibly older than they are, and presumably mightier,
are the "Fates" (Norns), three Ladies who are met with together, who
fulfil the parts of the gift-fairies of our Sleeping Beauty tales, and
bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful "Helge
Lay", a point of the story which survives in Ogier of the Chansons de
Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger
(Holge), the Helga of "Beowulf's Lay". The caprices of the Fates, where
one corrects or spoils the others' endowments, are seen in Saxo, when
beauty, bounty, and meanness are given together. They sometimes meet
heroes, as they met Helgi in the Eddic Lay (Helgi and Sigrun Lay),
and help or begift them; they prepare the magic broth for Balder, are
charmed with Hother's lute-playing, and bestow on him a belt of victory
and a girdle of splendour, and prophesy things to come.

The verse in Biarca-mal, where "Pluto weaves the dooms of the mighty and
fills Phlegethon with noble shapes," recalls Darrada-liod, and points to
Woden as death-doomer of the warrior.

"Giants".--These are stupid, mischievous, evil and cunning in Saxo's
eyes. Oldest of beings, with chaotic force and exuberance, monstrous in
extravagant vitality.

The giant nature of the older troll-kind is abhorrent to man and woman.
But a giantess is enamoured of a youth she had fostered, and giants
carry off king's daughters, and a three-bodied giant captures young
children.

Giants live in caves by the sea, where they keep their treasure. One
giant, Unfoot (Ofoti), is a shepherd, like Polyphemus, and has a famous
dog which passed into the charge of Biorn, and won a battle; a giantess
is keeping goats in the wilds. A giant's fury is so great that it takes
twelve champions to control him, when the rage is on him. The troll
(like our Puss-in-Boots Ogre) can take any shape.

Monstrous apparitions are mentioned, a giant hand (like that in one
story of Finn) searching for its prey among the inmates of a booth
in the wilds. But this Grendel-like arm is torn off by a giantess,
Hardgrip, daughter of Wainhead and niece possibly of Hafle.

The voice heard at night prophesying is that of some god or monster,
possibly Woden himself.

"Dwarves".--These Saxo calls Satyrs, and but rarely mentions. The dwarf
Miming, who lives in the desert, has a precious sword of sharpness
(Mistletoe?) that could even pierce skin-hard Balder, and a ring
(Draupnir) that multiplied itself for its possessor. He is trapped by
the hero and robbed of his treasures.




FUNERAL RITES AND MAN'S FUTURE STATE.

"Barrow-burials".--The obsequies of great men (such as the classic
funeral of "Beowulf's Lay", 3138-80) are much noticed by Saxo, and we
might expect that he knew such a poem (one similar to Ynglingatal, but
not it) which, like the Books of the Kings of Israel and Judah, recorded
the deaths and burials, as well as the pedigrees and deeds, of the
Danish kings.

The various stages of the "obsequy by fire" are noted; the byre
sometimes formed out of a ship; the "sati"; the devoted bower-maidens
choosing to die with their mistress, the dead man's beloved (cf. The
Eddic funerals of Balder, Sigfred, and Brunhild, in the Long "Brunhild's
Lay", Tregrof Gudrumar and the lost poem of Balder's death paraphrased
in the prose Edda); the last message given to the corpse on the pyre
(Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre;
the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days,
as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast,
where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the
epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone over the barrow.

The inclusion of a live man with the dead in a barrow, with the live or
fresh-slain beasts (horse and bound) of the dead man, seems to point to
a time or district when burning was not used. Apparently, at one time,
judging from Frode's law, only chiefs and warriors were burnt.

Not to bury was, as in Hellas, an insult to the dead, reserved for the
bodies of hated foes. Conquerors sometimes show their magnanimity (like
Harald Godwineson) by offering to bury their dead foes.

The buried "barrow-ghost" was formidable; he could rise and slay and
eat, vampire-like, as in the tale of Asmund and Aswit. He must in such
case be mastered and prevented doing further harm by decapitation and
thigh-forking, or by staking and burning. So criminals' bodies were
often burnt to stop possible haunting.

Witches and wizards could raise corpses by spells to make them prophesy.
The dead also appeared in visions, usually foretelling death to the
person they visited.

OTHER WORLDS.--The "Land of Undeath" is spoken of as a place reached by
an exiled hero in his wanderings. We know it from Eric the traveller's
S., Helge Thoreson's S., Herrand and Bose S., Herwon S., Thorstan
Baearmagn S., and other Icelandic sources. But the voyage to the Other
Worlds are some of the most remarkable of the narratives Saxo has
preserved for us.

"Hadding's Voyage Underground".--(a) A woman bearing in her lap angelica
fresh and green, though it was deep winter, appears to the hero at
supper, raising her head beside the brazier. Hadding wishes to know
where such plants grow.

(b) She takes him with her, under cover of her mantle, underground.

(c) They pierce a mist, get on a road worn by long use, pass nobly-clad
men, and reach the sunny fields that bear the angelica:--

     "Through griesly shadowes by a beaten path,
     Into a garden goodly garnished."
     --F.Q. ii. 7, 51.

(d) Next they cross, by a bridge, the "River of Blades", and see "two
armies fighting", ghosts of slain soldiers.

(e) Last they came to a high wall, which surrounds the land of Life, for
a cock the woman brought with her, whose neck she wrung and tossed over
this wall, came to life and crowed merrily.

Here the story breaks off. It is unfinished, we are only told that
Hadfling got back. Why he was taken to this under-world? Who took him?
What followed therefrom? Saxo does not tell. It is left to us to make
out.

That it is an archaic story of the kind in the Thomas of Ercildoune
and so many more fairy-tales, e.g., Kate Crack-a-Nuts, is certain. The
"River of Blades" and "The Fighting Warriors" are known from the Eddic
Poems. The angelica is like the green birk of that superb fragment, the
ballad of the Wife of Usher's Well--a little more frankly heathen, of
course--

     "It fell about the Martinmas, when nights are long and mirk,
     The carline wife's three sons cam hame, and their hats were
     o' the birk.
     It neither grew in syke nor dyke, nor yet in ony sheugh,
     But at the gates o' Paradise that birk grew fair eneuch."

The mantel is that of Woden when he bears the hero over seas; the cock
is a bird of sorcery the world over; the black fowl is the proper gift
to the Underground powers--a heriot really, for did not the Culture god
steal all the useful beasts out of the underground world for men's use?

Dr. Rydberg has shown that the "Seven Sleepers" story is an old Northern
myth, alluded to here in its early pre-Christian form, and that with
this is mixed other incidents from voyages of Swipdag, the Teutonic
Odusseus.

"Thorkill's Second Voyage to Outgarth-Loke to get Knowledge".--(a)
Guthrum is troubled as to the immortality and fate of the soul, and the
reward of piety after death. To spite Thorkill, his enviers advised the
king to send him to consult Outgarth-Loke. He required of the king that
his enemies should be sent with him.

(b) In one well-stored and hide-defended ship they set out, reached
a sunless, starless land, without fuel; ate raw food and suffered. At
last, after many days, a fire was seen ashore. Thorkill, setting a jewel
at the mast-head to be able to regain his vessel easily, rows ashore to
get fire.

(c) In a filthy, snake-paved, stinking cavern he sees two horny-nebbed
giants, (2) making a fire. One of the giants offers to direct him to
Loke if he will say three true things in three phrases, and this done,
tells him to row four days and then he would reach a Dark and Grassless
Land. For three more true sayings he obtains fire, and gets back to his
vessel.

(d) With good wind they make Grassless Land, go ashore, find a huge,
rocky cavern, strike a flint to kindle a fire at the entrance as a
safeguard against demons, and a torch to light them as they explored the
cavern.

(e) First appears iron seats set amid crawling snakes.

(f) Next is sluggish water flowing over sand.

(g) Last a steep, sloping cavern is reached, in a chamber of which lay
Outgarth-Loke chained, huge and foul.

(h) Thorkill plucks a hair of his beard "as big as a cornel-wood spear."
The stench that arose was fearful; the demens and snakes fell upon the
invaders at once; only Thorkill and five of the crew, who had sheltered
themselves with hides against the virulent poison the demons and snakes
cast, which would take a head off at the neck if it fell upon it, got
back to their ship.

(i) By vow to the "God that made the world", and offerings, a good
voyage was made back, and Germany reached, where Thorkill became a
Christian. Only two of his men survived the effects of the poison and
stench, and he himself was scarred and spoilt in the face.

(k) When he reached the king, Guthrum would not listen to his tale,
because it was prophesied to him that he would die suddenly if he heard
it; nay, he even sent men to smite him as he lay in bed, but, by the
device of laying a log in his place, he escaped, and going to the king
as he sat at meat, reproached him for his treachery.

(l) Guthrum bade him tell his story, but died of horror at hearing his
god Loke foully spoken of, while the stench of the hair that Thorkill
produced, as Othere did his horn for a voucher of his speech, slew many
bystanders.

This is the regular myth of Loke, punished by the gods, lying bound with
his own soils' entrails on three sharp stones and a sword-blade, (this
latter an addition, when the myth was made stones were the only blades),
with snakes' venom dripping on to him, so that when it falls on him he
shakes with pain and makes earthquakes--a Titan myth in answer to the
question, "Why does the earth quake?" The vitriolic power of the poison
is excellently expressed in the story. The plucking of the hair as a
token is like the plucking of a horn off the giant or devil that occurs
in some folk-tale.




MAGIC AND FOLK-SCIENCE.

There is a belief in magic throughout Saxo's work, showing how fresh
heathendom still was in men's minds and memories. His explanations, when
he euhemerizes, are those of his day.

By means of spells all kinds of wonders could be effected, and the
powers of nature forced to work for the magician or his favourite.

"Skin-changing" (so common in "Landnamaboc") was as well known as in the
classic world of Lucian and Apuleius; and, where Frode perishes of the
attacks of a witch metamorphosed into a walrus.

"Mist" is induced by spells to cover and hide persons, as in Homer,
and "glamour" is produced by spells to dazzle foemen's sight. To cast
glamour and put confusion into a besieged place a witch is employed by
the beleaguerer, just as William the Conqueror used the witch in the
Fens against Hereward's fortalice. A soothsayer warns Charles the Great
of the coming of a Danish fleet to the Seine's mouth.

"Rain and bad weather" may be brought on, as in a battle against
the enemy, but in this, as in other instances, the spell may be
counteracted.

"Panic Terror" may be induced by the spell worked with a dead horse's
head set up on a pole facing the antagonist, but the spell may be met
and combatted by silence and a counter-curse.

"Magic help" may be got by calling on the friendly magician's name.
The magician has also the power of summoning to him anyone, however
unwilling, to appear.

Of spells and magic power to blunt steel there are several instances;
they may be counteracted (as in the Icelandic Sagas) by using the hilt,
or a club, or covering the blade with fine skin. In another case the
champion can only be overcome by one that will take up some of the dust
from under his feet. This is effected by the combatants shifting their
ground and exchanging places. In another case the foeman can only
be slain by gold, whereupon the hero has a gold-headed mace made and
batters the life out of him therewith. The brothers of Swanhild cannot
be cut by steel, for their mail was charmed by the witch Gudrun, but
Woden taught Eormenric, the Gothic king, how to overcome them with
stones (which apparently cannot, as archaic weapons, be charmed against
at all, resisting magic like wood and water and fire). Jordanis tells
the true history of Ermanaric, that great Gothic emperor whose rule
from the Dnieper to the Baltic and Rhine and Danube, and long reign of
prosperity, were broken by the coming of the Huns. With him vanished the
first great Teutonic empire.

Magic was powerful enough even to raise the dead, as was practised
by the Perms, who thus renewed their forces after a battle. In the
Everlasting battle the combatants were by some strange trick of fate
obliged to fulfil a perennial weird (like the unhappy Vanderdecken).
Spells to wake the dead were written on wood and put under the corpses'
tongue. Spells (written on bark) induce frenzy.

"Charms" would secure a man against claw or tooth.

"Love philtres" (as in the long "Lay of Gudrun) appear as everywhere in
savage and archaic society.

"Food", porridge mixed with the slaver of tortured snakes, gives magic
strength or endues the eater with eloquence and knowledge of beast and
bird speech (as Finn's broiled fish and Sigfred's broiled dragon-heart
do).

"Poison" like these hell-broths are part of the Witch or Obi
stock-in-trade, and Frode uses powdered gold as an antidote.

"Omens" are observed; tripping as one lands is lucky (as with our
William the Norman). Portents, such as a sudden reddening of the sea
where the hero is drowned, are noticed and interpreted.

"Dreams" (cf. Eddic Lays of Attila, and the Border ballads) are
prophetic (as nine-tenths of Europeans firmly believe still); thus the
visionary flame-spouting dragon is interpreted exactly as Hogne's and
Attila's dreams. The dreams of the three first bridals nights (which
were kept hallowed by a curious superstition, either because the dreams
would then bold good, or as is more likely, for fear of some Asmodeus)
were fateful. Animals and birds in dreams are read as persons, as
nowadays.

A "curse" is powerful unless it can be turned back, when it will harm
its utterer, for harm someone it must. The "curse" of a dying man on his
slayer, and its lack of effect, is noted.

Sometimes "magic messengers" are sent, like the swans that bore a token
and uttered warning songs to the hero.

"Witches and wizards" (as belonging to the older layer of archaic
beliefs) are hateful to the gods, and Woden casts them out as accursed,
though he himself was the mightiest of wizards. Heathen Teutonic life
was a long terror by reason of witchcraft, as is the heathen African
life to-day, continual precautions being needful to escape the magic of
enemies. The Icelandic Sagas, such as Gretter's, are full of magic and
witchcraft. It is by witchcraft that Gretter is first lamed and finally
slain; one can see that Glam's curse, the Beowulf motif, was not really
in the original Gretter story.

"Folk-medicine" is really a branch of magic in old days, even to such
pioneers of science as Paracelsus.

Saxo's traditions note drinking of a lion's blood that eats men as a
means of gaining might and strength; the drinking of bear's blood is
also declared to give great bodily power.

The tests for "madness" are of a primitive character, such as those
applied to Odusseus, who, however, was not able, like Hamlet, to evade
them.

The test for death is the red-hot iron or hot brand (used by the
Abyssinians of to-day, as it was supposed in the thirteenth century to
have been used by Grimhild. "And now Grimhild goes and takes a great
brand, where the house had burnt, and goes to Gernot her brother, and
thrusts the burning brand in his mouth, and will know whether he is dead
or living. But Gernot was clearly dead. And now she goes to Gislher and
thrusts the firebrand in his mouth. He was not dead before, but Gislher
died of that. Now King Thidrec of Bern saw what Grimhild is doing,
and speaks to King Attila. `See how that devil Grimhild, thy wife, is
killing her brothers, the good warriors, and how many men have lost
their lives for her sake, and how many good men she has destroyed, Huns
and Amalungs and Niflungs; and in the same way would she bring thee and
me to hell, if she could do it?' Then spake King Attila, `Surely she is
a devil, and slay thou her, and that were a good work if thou had done
it seven nights ago! Then many a gallant fellow were whole that is now
dead.' Now King Thidrec springs at Grimhild and swings up his sword
Eckisax, and hews her asunder at the middle").

It was believed (as in Polynesia, where "Captain Cook's path" was shown
in the grass) that the heat of the hero's body might blast the grass; so
Starcad's entrails withered the grass.

It was believed that a severed head might bite the ground in rage, and
there were certainly plenty of opportunities for observation of such
cases.

It was believed that a "dumb man" might be so wrought on by passion that
he would speak, and wholly acquire speech-power.

Little is told of "surgery", but in one case of intestines protruding
owing to wounds, withies were employed to bind round the trunk and keep
the bowels from risk till the patient could be taken to a house and his
wounds examined and dressed. It was considered heroic to pay little heed
to wounds that were not dangerous, but just to leave them to nature.

Personal "cleanliness" was not higher than among savages now. A lover is
loused by his lady after the mediaeval fashion.

CHRISTIANITY--In the first nine books of Saxo, which are devoted to
heathendom, there is not much save the author's own Christian point
of view that smacks of the New Faith. The apostleships of Ansgarius in
Denmark, the conversion of King Eric, the Christianity of several later
Danish Kings, one of whom was (like Olaf Tryggwason) baptised in Britain
are also noticed.

Of "Christian legends" and beliefs, besides the euhemerist theory,
widely held, of the heathen gods there are few hints, save the idea
that Christ was born in the reign of Frode, Frode having been somehow
synchronised with Augustus, in whose reign also there was a world-peace.

Of course the christening of Scandinavia is history, and the mythic
books are little concerned with it. The episode in Adam of Bremen, where
the king offers the people, if they want a new god, to deify Eric, one
of their hero-kings, is eminently characteristic and true.




FOLK-TALES.

There might be a classification of Saxo's stories akin to that of the
Irish poets, Battles, Sieges, Voyages, Rapes, Cattle Forays, etc.; and
quite apart from the historic element, however faint and legendary,
there are a set of stories ascribed by him, or rather his authorities,
to definite persons, which had, even in his day, probably long been the
property of Tis, their original owners not being known owing to lapse
of time and the wear of memory, and the natural and accidental
catastrophies that impair the human record. Such are the "Dragon-Slayer"
stories. In one type of these the hero (Frithlaf) is cast on a desolate
island, and warned by a dream to attack and slay a dragon guarding
treasure. He wakes, sees the dragon arise out of the waves, apparently,
to come ashore and go back to the cavern or mound wherein the treasure
lay. His scales are too hard to pierce; he is terribly strong, lashing
trees down with his tail, and wearing a deep path through the wood and
over the stones with his huge and perpetual bulk; but the hero, covered
with hide-wrapped shield against the poison, gets down into the
hollow path, and pierces the monster from below, afterward rifling its
underground store and carrying off its treasure.

Again the story is repeated; the hero (Frode Haddingsson) is warned by
a countryman of the island-dragon and its hoard, is told to cover his
shield and body with bulls' hides against the poison, and smite the
monster's belly. The dragon goes to drink, and, as it is coming back,
it is attacked, slain, and its treasure lifted precisely as before. The
analogies with the Beowulf and Sigfred stories are evident; but no great
poet has arisen to weave the dragon-slaying intimately into the lives of
Frode and Frithlaf as they have been woven into the tragedy of Sigfred
the wooer of Brunhild and, if Dr. Vigffisson be right the conqueror of
Varus, or into the story of Beowulf, whose real engagements were with
sea-monsters, not fiery dragons.

Another type is that of the "Loathly Worm". A king out hunting (Herod
or Herraud, King of Sweden), for some unexplained reason brings home two
small snakes as presents for his daughter. They wax wonderfully, have
to be fed a whole ox a day, and proceed to poison and waste the
countryside. The wretched king is forced to offer his daughter (Thora)
to anyone who will slay them. The hero (Ragnar) devises a dress of a
peculiar kind (by help of his nurse, apparently), in this case, woolly
mantle and hairy breeches all frozen and ice-covered to resist the
venom, then strapping his spear to his hand, he encounters them boldly
alone. The courtiers hide "like frightened little girls", and the king
betakes him to a "narrow shelter", an euphemism evidently of Saxo's, for
the scene is comic. The king comes forth when the hero is victorious,
and laughing at his hairy legs, nick-names him Shaggy-breech, and bids
him to the feast. Ragnar fetches up his comrades, and apparently seeks
out the frightened courtiers (no doubt with appropriate quip, omitted by
Saxo, who hurries on), feasts, marries the king's daughter, and begets
on her two fine sons.

Of somewhat similar type is the proud "Maiden guarded" by Beasts. Here
the scene is laid in Gaulardale in Norway. The lady is Ladgerda, the
hero Ragnar. Enamoured of the maiden by seeing her prowess in war, he
accepts no rebuffs, but leaving his followers, enters the house, slays
the guardian Bear and Dog, thrusting one through with a spear and
throttling the other with his hand. The lady is won and wed, and two
daughters and a son (Frithlaf) duly begotten. The story of Alf and
Alfhild combines several types. There are the tame snakes, the baffled
suitors' heads staked to terrify other suitors, and the hero using
red-hot iron and spear to slay the two reptiles.

The "Proud Lady", (cf. Kudrun and the Niebelungen, and Are's story
of the queen that burnt her suitors) appears in Hermintrude, Queen of
Scotland, who battles and slays her lovers, but is out-witted by the
hero (Hamlet), and, abating her arrogance, agrees to wed him. This seems
an obvious accretion in the original Hamlet story, and probably owing
not to Saxo, but to his authority.

The "Beggar that stole the Lady" (told of Snio Siwaldson and the
daughter of the King of the Goths), with its brisk dialogue, must have
been one of the most artful of the folk-tales worked on by Saxo or his
informants; but it is only half told, unfortunately.

The "Crafty Soaker" is another excellent comic folk-tale. A terrible
famine made the king (Snio) forbid brewing to save the barley for
bread, and abolished all needless toping. The Soaker baffled the king by
sipping, never taking a full draught. Rebuked, he declared that he never
drank, but only sucked a drop. This was forbidden him for the future, so
he sopped his bread in ale, and in that inconvenient manner continued to
get drunk, excusing himself with the plea that though it was forbidden
to drink or sip beer, it was not forbidden to eat it. When this was in
turn prohibited, the Soaker gave up any pretence, and brewed and
drank unabashed, telling the angry king that he was celebrating his
approaching funeral with due respect, which excuse led to the repeal of
the obnoxious decree. A good Rabelaisian tale, that must not have
been wide-spread among the Danish topers, whose powers both Saxo and
Shakespeare have celebrated, from actual experience no doubt.

The "Magician's tricks to elude pursuit", so common an incident in
our fairy tales, e.g., Michael Scot's flight, is ascribed here to the
wonder-working and uncanny Finns, who, when pursued, cast behind
them successively three pebbles, which become to their enemies' eyes
mountains, then snow, which appeared like a roaring torrent. But they
could not cast the glamour on Arngrim a third time, and were forced to
submit. The glamour here and in the case of the breaking of Balder's
barrow is akin to that which the Druid puts on the sons of Uisnach.

The tale of the king who shuts up his daughter in an "earth-house" or
underground chamber with treasures (weapons and gold and silver), in
fear of invasion, looks like a bit of folk-tale, such as the "Hind in
the Wood", but it may have a traditional base of some kind here.

A folk-tale, very imperfectly narrated, is the "Clever King's Daughter",
who evidently in the original story had to choose her suitor by his feet
(as the giantess in the prose Edda chooses her husband), and was able to
do so by the device she had practised of sewing up her ring in his leg
sometime before, so that when she touched the flesh she could feel the
hardness of the ring beneath the scar.

Bits of folk-tales are the "Device for escaping threatened death by
putting a log in one's bed" (as in our Jack the Giant-Killer). The
device, as old as David's wife, of dressing up a dummy (here a basket
with a dog inside, covered outside with clothes), while the hero
escapes, is told of Eormenric, the mighty Gothic King of Kings, who,
like Walter of Aquitaine, Theodoric of Varona, Ecgherht, and Arminius,
was an exile in his youth. This traditional escape of the two lads from
the Scyths should be compared with the true story in Paul the Deacon
of his little ancestor's captivity and bold and successful stroke for
freedom.

"Disguise" plays a great part in the folk-tales used by Saxo. Woden
disguises himself in a cowl on his earthly travels, and heroes do the
same; a king disguises himself as a slave at his rival's court, to try
and find occasion of slaying him; a hero wraps himself up in skins, like
Alleleirah.

"Escaped recognition" is accordingly a feature in many of these simple
but artistic plots. A son is not known by his mother in the story of
Hrolf.

Other "Devices" are exemplified, such as the "booby-trap" loaded with
a millstone, which slays a hateful and despised tyrant, imposed by
a foreign conqueror; evasion by secret passages, and concealment in
underground vaults or earth-houses. The feigning of madness to escape
death occurs, as well as in the better-known Hamlet story. These
stratagems are universal in folk-history.

To Eric, the clever and quick of speech, is ascribed an excellent
sailor's smuggling trick to hide slaughtered cattle, by sinking them
till the search is over.

The "Hero's Mighty Childhood" (like David's) of course occurs when
he binds a bear with his girdle. Sciold is full grown at fifteen, and
Hadding is full grown in extreme youth. The hero in his boyhood slays a
full-grown man and champion. The cinder-biting, lazy stage of a mighty
youth is exemplified.

The "fierce eyes" of the hero or heroine, which can daunt an assassin as
could the piercing glance of Marius, are the "falcon eyes" of the Eddic
Lays.

The shining, effulgent, "illuminating hair" of the hero, which gives
light in the darkness, is noticed here, as it obtains in Cuaran's
thirteenth century English legend.

The wide-spread tale of the "City founded on a site marked out by a hide
cut into finest thongs", occurs, told of Hella and Iwarus exactly as our
Kentishmen told it of Hengist, and as it is also told of Dido.

The incidents of the "hero sleeping by a rill", of the guarded king's
daughter, with her thirty attendants, the king's son keeping sheep, are
part of the regular stock incidents in European folk-tales. So are the
Nausicaa incident of the "king's daughter going a washing", the hero
disguising himself as a woman and winding wool (like a second Heracles).

There are a certain number of stories, which only occur in Saxo and in
our other Northern sources with attributions, though they are of course
legendary; such are:

The "Everlasting Battle" between Hedhin and Hogne, a legend connected
with the great Brisinga-men story, and paralleled by the Cordelia-tale
among the Britons.

The story of the "Children preserved" is not very clearly told, and
Saxo seems to have euhemerized. It is evidently of the same type as the
Lionel-Lancelot story in the Arthurian cycle. Two children, ordered to
be killed, are saved by the slaying of other children in their place;
and afterwards by their being kept and named as dogs; they come to their
own and avenge their wrongs.

The "Journey to Hell" story is told of Eric, who goes to a far land to
fetch a princess back, and is successful. It is apparently an adventure
of Swipdag, if everyone had their rights. It is also told of Thorkill,
whose adventures are rather of the "True Thomas" type.

The "Test of Endurance" by sitting between fires, and the relief of the
tortured and patient hero by a kindly trick, is a variant of the famous
Eddic Lays concerning Agnar.

The "Robbers of the Island", evidently comes from an Icelandic source
(cf. The historic "Holmveria Saga" and Icelandic folk-tales of later
date), the incident of the hero slaying his slave, that the body might
be mistaken for his, is archaic in tone; the powerful horse recalls
Grani, Bayard, and even Sleipner; the dog which had once belonged to
Unfoot (Ofote), the giant shepherd (cf. its analogues in old Welsh
tales), is not quite assimilated or properly used in this story.
It seems (as Dr. Rydberg suspects) a mythical story coloured by the
Icelandic relater with memory full of the robber-hands of his own land.

The stratagem of "Starcad", who tried even in death to slay his slayer,
seems an integral part of the Starcad story; as much as the doom of
three crimes which are to be the price for the threefold life that a
triple man or giant should enjoy. The noose story in Starcad (cf. that
told of Bicce in the Eormenric story), is also integral.




SAXO'S MYTHOLOGY.

No one has commented upon Saxo's mythology with such brilliancy, such
minute consideration, and such success as the Swedish scholar, Victor
Rydberg. More than occasionally he is over-ingenious and over-anxious to
reduce chaos to order; sometimes he almost loses his faithful reader in
the maze he treads so easily and confidently, and sometimes he stumbles
badly. But he has placed the whole subject on a fresh footing, and much
that is to follow will be drawn from his "Teutonic Mythology" (cited
here from the English version by Rasmus B. Anderson, London, 1889, as
"T.M.").

Let us take first some of the incontestable results of his
investigations that affect Saxo.

SCIOLD is the father of Gram in Saxo, and the son of Sceaf in other
older authorities. Dr. Rydberg (97-101) forms the following equations
for the Sciolding patriarchs:--

     a. Scef--Heimdal--Rig.
     b. Sciold--Borgar--Jarl.
     c. Gram--Halfdan--Koming.

Chief among the mythic tales that concern Saxo are the various portions
of the Swipdag-Myth, which Dr. Rydberg has been able to complete with
much success. They may be resumed briefly as follows:--

Swipdag, helped by the incantations of his dead mother, whom he had
raised from the dead to teach him spells of protection, sets forth on
his quests. He is the Odusseus of the Teutonic mythology. He desires to
avenge his father on Halfdan that slew him. To this end he must have a
weapon of might against Halfdan's club. The Moon-god tells him of the
blade Thiasse has forged. It has been stolen by Mimer, who has gone out
into the cold wilderness on the rim of the world. Swipdag achieves the
sword, and defeats and slays Halfdan. He now buys a wife, Menglad, of
her kinsmen the gods by the gift of the sword, which thus passes into
Frey's hands.

How he established a claim upon Frey, and who Menglad was, is explained
in Saxo's story of Eric, where the characters may be identified thus:--

     Swipdag--Eric
     Freya--Gunwara
     Frey--Frode III
     Niord--Fridlaf
     Wuldor--Roller
     Thor--Brac
     Giants--The Greps
     Giants--Coller.

Frey and Freya had been carried off by the giants, and Swipdag and his
faithful friend resolve to get them back for the Anses, who bewail their
absence. They journey to Monster-land, win back the lady, who ultimately
is to become the hero's wife, and return her to her kindred; but her
brother can only be rescued by his father Niord. It is by wit rather
than by force that Swipdag is successful here.

The third journey of Swipdag is undertaken on Frey's behalf; he goes
under the name of Scirner to woo giant Gymer's daughter Gerth for his
brother-in-law, buying her with the sword that he himself had paid to
Frey as his sister's bride-price. So the sword gets back to the giants
again.

Swipdag's dead foe Halfdan left two young "avengers", Hadding and
Guthorm, whom he seeks to slay. But Thor-Brache gives them in charge
of two giant brothers. Wainhead took care of Hadding, Hafle of Guthorm.
Swipdag made peace with Guthorm, in a way not fully explained to us, but
Hadding took up the blood-feud as soon as he was old enough.

Hadding was befriended by a woman, who took him to the Underworld--the
story is only half told in Saxo, unluckily--and by Woden, who took him
over-sea wrapt in his mantle as they rode Sleipner over the waves; but
here again Saxo either had not the whole story before him, or he wished
to abridge it for some reason or prejudice, and the only result of this
astonishing pilgrimage is that Woden gives the young hero some useful
counsels. He falls into captivity, entrapped by Loke (for what reason
again we are left to guess), and is exposed to wild beasts, but he slays
the wolf that attacks him, and eating its heart as Woden had bidden him,
he gains wisdom and foresight.

Prepared by these adventures, he gets Guthorm to join him (how or why
the peace between him and Swipdag was broken, we know not), and they
attack their father's slayer, but are defeated, though Woden sunk Asmund
Swipdag's son's ship, Grio, at Hlessey, and Wainhead and Hardgrip his
daughter fought for Hadding.

Hadding wanders off to the East with his foster-sister and mistress and
Hardgrip, who is slain protecting him against an angry ghost raised from
the Underworld by her spells. However, helped by Heimdal and Woden (who
at this time was an exile), Hadding's ultimate success is assured.

When Woden came back to power, Swipdag, whose violence and pride grew
horribly upon him, was exiled, possibly by some device of his foes,
and took upon him, whether by will or doom, a sea-monster's shape. His
faithful wife follows him over land and sea, but is not able to save
him. He is met by Hadding and, after a fierce fight, slain. Swipdag's
wife cursed the conqueror, and he was obliged to institute an annual
sacrifice to Frey (her brother) at Upsale, who annuls the curse. Loke,
in seal's guise, tried to steal the necklace of Freya at the Reef of
Treasures, where Swipdag was slain, but Haimdal, also in sealskin,
fought him, and recovered it for the gods.

Other myths having reference to the goddesses appear in Saxo. There is
the story of "Heimdall and Sol", which Dr. Rydberg has recognised in the
tale of Alf and Alfhild. The same tale of how the god won the sun for
his wife appears in the mediaeval German King Ruther (in which title Dr.
Ryuberg sees Hrutr, a name of the ram-headed god).

The story of "Othar" (Od) and "Syritha" (Sigrid) is obviously that of
Freya and her lover. She has been stolen by the giants, owing to the
wiles of her waiting-maid, Loke's helper, the evil witch Angrbode. Od
seeks her, finds her, slays the evil giant who keeps her in the cave;
but she is still bewitched, her hair knotted into a hard, horny mass,
her eyes void of brightness. Unable to gain recognition he lets her go,
and she is made by a giantess to herd her flocks. Again found by Od, and
again refusing to recognise him, she is let go again. But this time
she flies to the world of men, and takes service with Od's mother and
father. Here, after a trial of her love, she and Od are reconciled.
Sywald (Sigwald), her father, weds Od's sister.

The tale of the vengeance of Balder is more clearly given by the Dane,
and with a comic force that recalls the Aristophanic fun of Loka-senna.
It appears that the story had a sequel which only Saxo gives. Woden
had the giantess Angrbode, who stole Freya, punished. Frey, whose
mother-in-law she was, took up her quarrel, and accusing Woden of
sorcery and dressing up like a woman to betray Wrind, got him banished.
While in exile Wuldor takes Woden's place and name, and Woden lives on
earth, part of the time at least, with Scathe Thiasse's daughter, who
had parted from Niord.

The giants now resolved to attack Ansegard; and Woden, under the name of
Yggr, warned the gods, who recall him after ten years' exile.

But for Saxo this part of the story of the wars of the gods would be
very fragmentary.

The "Hildiger story", where a father slays his son unwittingly, and
then falls at his brother's hand, a tale combining the Rustam and
the Balin-Balan types, is one of the Hilding tragedies, and curiously
preserved in the late "Saga of Asmund the Champions' bane". It is an
antithesis, as Dr. Rydberg remarks, to the Hildebrand and Hadubrand
story, where father and son must fight and are reconciled.

The "story of Orwandel" (the analogue of Orion the Hunter) must be
gathered chiefly from the prose Edda. He was a huntsman, big enough and
brave enough to cope with giants. He was the friend of Thor, the husband
of Groa, the father of Swipdag, the enemy of giant Coller and the
monster Sela. The story of his birth, and of his being blinded, are
lost apparently in the Teutonic stories, unless we may suppose that the
bleeding of Robin Hood till he could not see by the traitorous prioress
is the last remains of the story of the great archer's death.

Great part of the troubles which befell the gods arose from the
antagonism of the sons of Iwalde and the brethren Sindre and Brokk
(Cinder and Brank), rival artist families; and it was owing to the
retirement of their artist foster-parents that Frey and Freya were left
among the giants. The Hniflung hoard is also supposed to have consisted
of the treasures of one band of primaeval artists, the Iwaldings.

Whether we have here the phenomenon of mythological doublets belonging
to different tribes, or whether we have already among these early names
that descent of story which has led to an adventure of Moses being
attributed to Garibaldi, given to Theodoric the king the adventures
of Theodoric the god, taken Arthur to Rome, and Charles the Great to
Constantinople, it is hard to say.

The skeleton-key of identification, used even as ably as Dr. Rydberg
uses it, will not pick every mythologic lock, though it undoubtedly has
opened many hitherto closed. The truth is that man is a finite animal;
that he has a limited number of types of legend; that these legends, as
long as they live and exist, are excessively prehensile; that, like the
opossum, they can swing from tree to tree without falling; as one tree
dies out of memory they pass on to another. When they are scared away
by what is called exact intelligence from the tall forest of great
personalities, they contrive to live humbly clinging to such bare plain
stocks and poles (Tis and Jack and Cinderella) as enable them to find a
precarious perch.

To drop similitudes, we must be prepared, in unravelling our tangled
mythology, to go through several processes. We must, of course, note the
parallelisms and get back to the earliest attribution-names we can find.
But all system is of late creation, it does not begin till a certain
political stage, a stage where the myths of coalescing clans come into
contact, and an official settlement is attempted by some school of
poets or priests. Moreover, systematization is never so complete that it
effaces all the earlier state of things. Behind the official systems of
Homer and Hesiod lies the actual chaos of local faiths preserved for us
by Pausanias and other mythographers. The common factors in the various
local faiths are much the majority among the factors they each possess;
and many of these common factors are exceedingly primitive, and resolve
themselves into answers to the questions that children still ask, still
receiving no answer but myth--that is, poetic and subjective hypothesis,
containing as much truth as they can receive or their inventors can
grasp.

Who were our forbears? How did day and night, sun and moon, earth and
water, and fire come? How did the animals come? Why has the bear no
tail? Why are fishes dumb, the swallow cleft-tail? How did evil come?
Why did men begin to quarrel? How did death arise? What will the end be?
Why do dead persons come back? What do the dead do? What is the earth
shaped like? Who invented tools and weapons, and musical instruments,
and how? When did kings and chiefs first come?

From accepted answers to such questions most of the huge mass of
mythology arises. Man makes his gods in his own image, and the doctrines
of omen, coincidence, and correspondence helped by incessant and
i